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A River Scene in Florida 



FOREST TEEE8 AND 
FOREST SCENERY 



BY 



G. FREDERICK SCHWARZ 



ILLUSTRATED 






NEW YORK 

THE GRAFTON PRESS 

1901 



The library of 
qonqress, 

Two Cociee Received 

DEC. 9 190! 

Opvwoht entbv 

CLASS (X.XXa No. 

*.* f «£ 
G»PY B. 






Copyright, 1901, by 
G. Frederick Schwarz 



PKEFACE 

In the ensuing pages I have made simple 
inquiries into the sources of beauty and at- 
tractiveness in American forest trees and 
sylvan scenery. In the concluding chapter, 
by way of contrast, I have given a short ac- 
count of the esthetic effects of the artificial 
forests of Europe. The system which shaped 
these forests and gave them their present ap- 
pearance should, however, possess more than 
a comparative interest for Americans. It 
has, in fact, a further connection, though a 
slight one, with the subject, and therefore 
requires a few words of explanation. 

It is well known that in many parts of 
Europe the forests have long been subjected 
to a systematic treatment known as forestry. 
The term, at first strange, is gradually be- 
coming quite familiar to us Americans, for 
the application of this comparatively new 
science has already begun in many sections 
v 



PEEFACE 



of our country. The principles of European 
forestry will naturally undergo many modifi- 
cations in their new environment, and the 
vastness of our forest areas, as well as the 
long life that naturally belongs to trees, will 
impose a very gradual progress. Neverthe- 
less, the movement for a rational use of our 
forests is rapidly advancing and is certain 
in time to find a very wide application. 

Although the aims of forestry are utili- 
tarian and not artistic, the technical char- 
acter of the operations which it involves im- 
presses upon natural forest scenery a changed 
aspect. Eventually the work performed upon 
our forests will be manifested in a new outward 
appearance, a change that cannot but be pref- 
erable to the scenes ordinarily presented by 
our cut-over and abandoned timberlands, and 
one that will be appreciated not only by forest 
lovers in general, but also by those who are en- 
gaged in the lumber industry itself, who are 
often forced through competition and prevail- 
ing methods to leave a desolate picture behind, 
vi 



PKEFACE 

In a word, forestry interests us here be- 
cause, having already obtained a foothold in 
our country, through it forest beauty stands 
on the threshold of a new relationship. This 
relationship, which is to grow more intimate 
with time, appears to justify a certain dis- 
crimination in the choice of the trees and 
forests herein described, and an occasional 
reference to some of the less technical mat- 
ters of forestry that may incidentally suggest 
themselves as being of some interest to the 
general reader. To have attempted more than 
this would have detracted from the unity of 
the subject. While the reader may, there- 
fore, find in these pages some facts that are 
new to him, he will notice that these facts have 
been made subordinate to the leading object 
of the book, an appreciation of the esthetic 
value of some of our commonest forest trees. 

The illustrations have been derived from 
various sources. The plates facing pages 38, 
58, 62, 64, 66, 116, 120, 130, are reproductions 
from original photographs that were furnished 



PREFACE 



through the courtesy of the Bureau of Fores- 
try, United States Department of Agriculture. 
My grateful acknowledgments are due Mr. 
Overton W. Price, Assistant Chief of the 
Bureau of Forestry, for photographs chosen 
out of his collection to supply the plates 
facing pages 69, 148, 158. The remaining 
illustrations have been reproduced from pho- 
tographs in my own collection. 

Notes of reference, which are indicated by 
superior figures in the text, and an index to 
the names of the trees that have been de- 
scribed or specially referred to in these pages, 
will be found at the close of the book. The 
index has been compiled from a well-known 
bulletin of the Bureau of Forestry, United 
States Department of Agriculture, entitled 
"Check List of the Forest Trees of the United 
States." Courteous acknowledgment is here 
made to the author, Mr. George B. Sudworth, 
and to the Division of Publications, of the 
same Department, for kind permission to 
make extracts from the bulletin referred to. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

i Forest Trees 1 

The Broadleaf Trees 3 

The Cone-Bearers 29 

ii Forest Adornment .63 

m Distribution op American Forests 83 

iv Character of the Broadleaf Forests 97 

v The Coniferous Forests 116 

vi The Artificial Forests of Europe . 141 



LIST OF ILLTJSTKATIOSTS 
A River Scene in Florida .... Frontispiece 

Facing page 

Foliage of the White Oak 8 

Spray of the Sugar Maple 12 

Spray of the Red Maple 12 

The Dogwood in Bloom 22 

Tulip Trees 26 

Character of the White Pine 34 

Sugar Pines 36 

A Pinery in the South 38 

The Bull Pine in its California Home ... 40 

A Silver Fir at Middle Age 50 

Redwood Forest in California 58 

Devastation in the Forest 60 

Where the Sheep Have Been 62 

A Passageway through Granite Rocks ... 64 

Shrubbery and River Birches. New Jersey . 66 

Fern Patch in a Grove of White Birch ... 69 

A Yucca in the Chaparral 78 

xi 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing page 

Virgin Forest Scene in Florida 110 

A Group of Conifers. Montana 116 

Mount Rainier. "Washington 120 

A Thicket of White Firs 125 

An Open Forest in the Southwest 130 

A Storm-beaten Veteran 132 

A German " Selection Forest " 148 

A "High Forest" of Spruce in Saxony . . .158 



xii 



FOEEST TREES AM) 
FOREST SCENERY 



One impulse from a vernal wood 
May teach you more of man, 

Of moral evil and of good, 
Than all the sages can." 

Wordsworth. 



FOKEST TEEES 

THE beauty of a forest is not simple 
in character, but is due to many 
separate sources. The trees contribute 
much; the shrubs, the rocks, the mosses, 
play their part; the purity of the air, 
the forest silence, the music of wind in 
the trees — these and other influences 
combine to produce woodland beauty 
and charm. A first consideration, how- 
ever, should be to know the beauty that 
is revealed by the trees themselves. 

Here it will be wise to make a selec- 
tion: to choose out of the great variety 
of our forest flora those trees that most 
1 



FOKEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

deserve our attention. Many of our 
forest trees have naturally a restricted 
range; others are narrowing or widen- 
ing their range through human inter- 
ference ; still others have already es- 
tablished their right to a preeminence 
among the trees of the future, because, 
possessing to an unusual degree the 
qualities that will make them amenable 
to the new and improved methods of 
treatment known as "forestry," they 
are certain to receive special care and 
attention; while those that are not so 
fortunate will be left to fight their own 
battles, or may even be exterminated 
to make room for the more useful 
kinds. Among all these the rarest are 
not necessarily the most beautiful. 
Those that are commonest and most 
useful are often distinguished for qual- 
2 



FOKEST TKEES 



ities that please the eye or appeal di- 
rectly to the mind. 

In accordance with the ideas already 
expressed in the Preface, the considera- 
tions that will determine what trees shall 
be described are as follows : first, trees 
of beanty ; next, those that are common 
and familiar; finally, those that are im- 
portant both for the present and the fu- 
ture because they are useful and have 
an extended geographical distribution. 

The trees selected for description 
will here be divided into the two con- 
ventional groups of broadleaf species 
and conifers, beginning with the former. 

THE BROADLEAF TREES 

In the " Landscape Gardening " of 
Downing we read concerning the oak, — 
3 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

"When we consider its great and 

surpassing utility and beauty, we are 

fully disposed to concede it the first 

rank among the denizens of the forest. 

Springing up with a noble trunk, and 

stretching out its broad limbs over the 

soil, 

' These monarchs of the wood, 
Dark, gnarled, centennial oaks/ 

seem proudly to bid defiance to time; 
and while generations of man appear 
and disappear, they withstand the 
storms of a thousand winters, and seem 
only to grow more venerable and 
majestic." 

It would be difficult to say whether 
Downing had any particular species of 
oak in mind when he wrote these words. 
The common white oak and the several 
species of red and black oak possess in 
4 



FOEFST TREES 



an eminent degree the grandeur and 
strength which he describes and for 
which we commonly admire the tree. 

Of all the oaks 1 the white oak is 
the most important. This tree will 
impress us differently as we see it 
in the open field or in the dense forest. 
Where it stands by itself in the full 
enjoyment of light, it has a round- 
topped, dome-shaped crown, and is 
massive and well poised in all its parts. 
Quite as often, however, we shall see 
it gathered into little groups of three or 
four on the greensward of some gently 
sloping hill, where it has a graceful 
way of keeping company. The groups 
are full of expression, the effect is di- 
versified from tree to tree, yet harmoni- 
ous in the whole. In the denser forest 
the white oak often reaches noble pro- 
5 



FOKEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

portions and assumes its most indi- 
vidual expression. There it mounts 
proudly upward, contending in height 
at wide intervals with sugar maples 
and tulip trees, its common associates 
in the forest. Its lofty crown may be 
seen at a distance, lifted conspicuously 
above the heads of its neighbors. Stand 
beneath it, however, and look up at its 
lower branches, and there is revealed 
an intricacy of branchwork and a tortu- 
osity of limb such as is unattained 
when it stands alone in the field. The 
boldness with which the white oak will 
sometimes throw out its limbs abruptly, 
and twist and writhe to the outermost 
twig, I have never seen quite equaled in 
the other oaks. The live oak, it must 
be admitted, is even more abrupt where 
the limb divides from the trunk, but 



FOREST TEEES 



it does not continue its vagaries to 
the end. 

It is to be noted that these forms are 
not without a purpose and a meaning. 
Under difficulties and obstacles the 
twigs and branches have groped their 
way; often one part has been sacrificed 
for the good of another, in order that 
all gifts of air, and moisture, and light 
might be received in. the fullness of 
their worth. Thus the entire frame- 
work of the tree becomes infused 
with life and meaning, almost with 
sense, and its character is reflected in 
its expression. 

The observer is also impressed by 
the character of the foliage. The 
leaves are usually rather blunt and 
ponderous, varying a little — as, in- 
deed, do those of several other trees 
7 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

— according to the nature of their en- 
vironment. They clothe the tree in 
profusion, but do not hide the beauty 
of the ramification of its branches. In 
truth, they are not devoid of beauty 
themselves. It was natural for Lowell 
to exclaim, — 

A little of thy steadfastness, 

Rounded with leafy gracefulness, 
Old oak, give me. 

While the leaves of the white oak do 
not deflect and curve as much in their 
growth as those of some of the more 
graceful and elegant trees, they never- 
theless fall into natural and pleasing 
groups, unfolding a pretty variation as 
they work out their patient spiral as- 
cent, leaf after leaf, round the stemlet; 
showing a changefulness in the sizes of 
8 




Foliage of the White Oak 



FOEEST TEEES 



the several leaves, and a choice in the 
spacing. In the first weeks of leafing- 
thne there is to be added to these 
features the effects derived from tran- 
sitions of color in the leaves. For the 
very young leaves are not green, but 
of a deep rose or dusky gray. They 
are velvety in texture, and lie nestling 
within the groups of the larger green 
leaves that have preceded them. Just 
as it was said a little while ago that 
there was expressiveness throughout 
the branches, it may now be said that 
there is a fitness of the foliage for all 
parts of the tree. 

In winter, however, the beauty of the 
oak's foliage is gone. The dry leaves 
still hang on the boughs, sometimes 
even until spring, but they look dishev- 
eled and dreary. Still, they are not 
9 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

without some esthetic value, though it 
be through the sense of hearing instead 
of sight. Thoreau says, — 

" The dry rustle of the withered oak- 
leaves is the voice of the wood in winter. 
It sounds like the roar of the sea, and is 
inspirating like that, suggesting how all 
the land is seacoast to the aerial ocean." 

Deep and glorious, too, is the light 
that rests in the oak woods on mid- 
summer days. It niters, softened and 
subdued, through the wealth of foliage, 
and wraps us in a mellow radiance. Its 
purity and calm depth lift the senses to 
a higher level. Most limpid is the light 
in a misty shower, when the sun is low 
and the level rays break through the 
moist leaves and dampened air, while 
we stand within and see everything 
bathed in a golden luster. 
10 



FOEEST TREES 



Our common chestnut is of less 
economic value than the oak, but one 
suggests the other, for the two are 
often found together and are similar in 
size and habit. The chestnut is, in 
truth, one of our finest deciduous trees. 
It has a luxuriance of healthy, dark- 
green foliage, and is happy-looking in 
its abundance of yellow-tasseled blos- 
soms. It is even more beautiful in 
August, when the young burs mingle 
their even tinge of brown with the 
fresh green of the glossy leaves. In 
old age it has the same firmness that 
is so noticeable in the oak, and seems 
to be just as regardless of the winds 
and gales. 

The character of the leaf and the 
manner in which the branches of a tree 
divide and ramify have so much to do 
11 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

with certain beautiful effects, that I 
shall make some remarks on these fea- 
tures in two of our maples. The sugar 
or hard maple is the most useful 
member of this genus, and may advan- 
tageously be compared with the red 
maple, which is perhaps more beautiful. 
It is of great advantage to both of 
these trees that the sweep of their 
branches, which is carried out in ample, 
undulating lines, is in perfect harmony 
with the elegance of their foliage. In the 
sugar maple the latter spreads over the 
boughs in soft and pleasing contours. 
The leaves are a trifle larger than those 
of the red maple, and their edges are 
wavy or flowing, while their surfaces 
are slightly undulating and have less 
luster than those of the other tree. 
They are thus well fitted to receive a 
12 




Spray of the Sugar Maple 




Spray of the Red Maple 



FOEEST TEEES 



flood of light without being in danger 
of presenting a clotted appearance. 
The petioles, or little leaf-stems, as- 
sume a more horizontal position than 
they do in the red maple, and the twigs 
are usually shorter, which allows a 
denser richness in the foliage, which 
every breeze plays upon and ruffles as 
it passes by. 

The red maple has a more airy look. 
This is due partly to the character 
of the leaf, but primarily to that of 
the branchwork. The main branches 
spread out in easy, flowing lines, much 
as they do in the sugar maple; but 
they assume an ampler range, and the 
last divisions, the twigs, take on de- 
cided curves, rising to right and left. 
On these the leaves multiply, each leaf 
poised lightly upon its curved petiole. 
13 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

As compared with the leaf of its con- 
gener, that of the red maple is firmer 
and a shade lighter, especially under- 
neath. It is also more agile in the 
wind. The effect of the whole is 
more that of a shower of foliage than 
of pillowed masses. The curving lines, 
the elastic spring of every part, and a 
kind of freedom among the many leaves, 
make the red maple one of the cheer- 
fullest of trees. 

The sugar maple is the larger of the 
two, and seeks the intervales and up- 
lands, where its size is well set off in 
the landscape. The red maple, which 
finds its natural home along river- 
banks and in moist places, is interest- 
ing at all seasons. When young it is 
particularly attractive in summer where 
it fringes lakes and streams. In winter 
14 



FOKEST TREES 



its bright, red twigs present a pleasing 
contrast to the gray bark or to the 
snow-covered earth. In the earliest 
days of spring the little scarlet blos- 
soms break out in tufts that soon ripen 
into brilliant little keys, looking very 
pretty where they intermingle with the 
pale green of the opening leaves. 

There is, in fact, more color in the 
woods in the opening days of spring 
than is generally admitted or noticed. 
Many kinds of trees unfold their leaves 
in some tender shade of rose or golden 
brown; while others lend a distinct 
color to a whole section of forest by 
the opening of their early blossoms. 

The maples, however, are chiefly 
famous for their wonderful richness of 
color in the fall of the year; particu- 
larly the sugar and the red maple, whose 
15 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

brilliancy at this season it would be 
difficult to match. They exhibit, in 
truth, a gamut of beautiful tones, from 
pale yellow to deep orange, and from 
bright scarlet to vivid crimson. They 
are among the first to change the 
color of their leaves, but are quickly 
followed by other species of trees, 
whose varying hues blend together and 
enrich the autumn landscape. The 
" scarlet " and " red " oaks now justify 
their names; the flowering dogwood 
and the sweet gum show their soft 
depth of purple; the milder tulip tree 
takes on a golden tint and shimmers 
in the sun, mingling with ruddy horn- 
beams, browned beeches, variegated 
sassafras trees, or the fiery foliage of 
the tupelos. The swamps are aflame 
with the brilliancy of red maples, con- 
16 



FOREST TEEES 



trasting with the quieter tones of alders 
and willows. 

We may speak of brilliancy and 
color in our leafy woods at the ebb- 
tide of the year; but to know their 
beauty well we must walk among the 
trees. Nor can pictures tell us all the 
truth about the tints of autumn. How 
should we receive from them the at- 
mospheric effects that nature gives, 
and the indescribable blending and 
softening that comes from innumerable 
rays of diffused and reflected light? 
The beauty also changes from day to 
day and from hour to hour, for weeks. 

Some of the other broadleaf trees 
deserve to be noticed, though in less 
detail, as objects of beauty in the forest. 
The honey locust, one of our largest 
trees of this class, is distinguished 
17 



FOKEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

principally for the elegant forms of 
its branches. The smaller divisions, 
the twigs, follow a zigzag course which 
in itself is not beautiful, but the effect 
is so bound up with the complex spiral 
evolutions of the larger divisions, the 
boughs and branches, that the result is 
only to heighten the elegance of the 
latter. The foliage of this tree is very 
delicate, being composed of numerous 
elliptically shaped leaflets, that are 
gathered into sprays that hang airily 
among the bold and sweeping boughs. 
Much might be said here in com- 
mendation of the sassafras tree, were 
it economically more important. Its 
brown, sculptured bark is very attrac- 
tive, and its yellowish blossoms, that 
break in early spring, are fragrant. 
The leaves are of several shades of 
18 



FOEEST TREES 



green, and vary considerably in out- 
line. When in full leaf, the outward 
form of the tree is striking in appear- 
ance, its foliage being massed into 
rounded and hemispherical shapes that 
group themselves in the crown of the 
tree in well-proportioned and tasteful 
outlines. 

The birches, too, are very attractive 
trees, especially where they have ample 
room to develop. The white birch ap- 
pears at its best where it is sprinkled 
in moderation among open groves of 
other trees. To the forester it is of 
some importance, as its seedlings rap- 
idly cover denuded or burnt areas. 
They also shield from excessive sun- 
light or from frost the seedlings of 
more valuable kinds that may have 
sprouted in their welcome shade ; until, 
19 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

gaining strength, the latter after a 
few years push up their tops between 
the open foliage of their protecting 
" nurses." The white birch may be seen 
performing this good office in many a 
fire-scarred piece of woodland through- 
out the Northeastern States. Often, 
too, we see it standing a little apart, 
as at the edge of a forest; its slender 
branches drooping around the pure 
white trunk and its agile leaves gleam- 
ing as they wave in the light breeze. 
It is like one of those single notes in 
music that glide into universal harmony 
with irresistible charm. 

The yellow birch, on the contrary, is 
most beautiful in the depth of the for- 
est. It is a large, useful tree. In the 
Adirondacks I have often admired 
its tall, straight trunk as it rose above 
20 



FOREST TREES 



the neighboring firs and spruces and 
unfolded its large, regular crown of 
dense dark foliage, relieved underneath 
by the thin, shining, silvery to golden- 
yellow bark, torn here and there into 
shreds that curled back upon them- 
selves around the stem. 

The white elm, well represented in 
the avenues of New England, is widely 
distributed. It is a tree for the mea- 
dow, although its natural grace and, 
one might almost say, inborn gentle- 
ness are preserved along the fringes 
of the forest and on the banks of 
streams. It needs some room to show 
the refinement of its closely interwoven 
spray. Watch its beauty as it sways 
in the light wind ; or look at a grove of 
elms after a hoar-frost on some early 
morning in winter, when the leaves are 
21 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

gone and all its outlines are penciled 
in finest silver. 

The flowering dogwood is one of our 
smaller trees, but is exceptionally fa- 
vored with all manner of beauty. Al- 
though it is very common in many 
of the States, and is not without its 
special uses, it occupies a subordinate 
position in the eyes of the forester, be- 
ing often no more than a mere shrub 
in form. And yet, while some of the 
larger trees by their majestic presence 
lend grandeur to the forest, the dog- 
wood brings to it a charm not easily 
forgotten. In spring, when it is show- 
ered all over with interesting, large, 
creamy-white flowers, it is an emblem 
of purity. Its leaves, which appear 
very soon after the bloom, are ele- 
gantly curved in outline, soft of tex- 
22 







The Dogwood in Bloom 



FOREST TREES 



ture, light-green in summer, and of a 
deep crimson or rich purple-maroon in 
autumn. 2 In winter the flowers are 
replaced by bright, red berries. Its 
spray of twigs and branchlets, formed 
by a succession of exquisitely propor- 
tioned waves and upward curves, is 
not as conspicuous, though hardly less 
ornamental at this season than the 
fruit. 

As a shrub, being among the very 
first to bloom, it decorates the forest 
borders in spring, or stands conspicu- 
ously within the forest. It is found 
everywhere in the Appalachian region. 
In the coastal plain it is associated 
with the longleaf pine, or may be seen 
among broadleaf trees, or standing 
among red junipers, as tall as they and 
quite at home in their company. 
23 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

Before turning to coniferous trees, 
the tulip tree deserves some attention 
on account of its usefulness, its ex- 
tended habitat, and its beauty as a 
forest tree. It is closely related to the 
magnolias, to which belongs the big 
laurel of the Gulf region, an evergreen 
species that might be called the queen 
of all broadleaf trees. But the big 
laurel must here give place to the tulip 
tree, because it is not so distinctively a 
forest tree, and is much more restricted 
in its geographical distribution. 

The first general impression of the 
tulip tree is, I venture to say, one of 
strangeness. There is a foreign look 
about the heavy, truncated leaves, and 
an oriental luxury in the large, green- 
ish-yellow flowers. These appear in 
May or June, while the conelike fruit 
24 



FOREST TREES 



ripens in the fall. When the seeds 
have scattered, the open cones, upright 
in position, remain for a long time on 
the tree, where they are strikingly 
ornamental. 

Esthetically the most important fea- 
ture of the tulip tree is an expression of 
dignity and stateliness, which gives it 
a character of its own. Its extraordi- 
nary size renders it a conspicuous ob- 
ject in the forest, the more so because 
we usually find it associated with a va- 
riety of other trees of quite different 
aspect. Michaux, who has told us 
much about the forest flora of the east- 
ern United States, could find no tree 
among the deciduous kinds, except the 
buttonwood, that would bear compari- 
son with it in size, and he calls it " one 
of the most magnificent vegetables of 
25 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

the temperate zone." Its columnar 
trunk continues with unusual straight- 
ness and regularity nearly to the sum- 
mit of the tree. Its limbs and branches 
divide in harmonious proportions, reach- 
ing out as if conscious of their strength, 
and yet with sufficient gracefulness to 
lend dignity to the tree. The lower 
boughs, especially, are inclined to as- 
sume an elegant sweep, deflecting side- 
wise to the earth, and ending with an 
upward curve and a droop at the outer 
extremity. Often the crowded envi- 
ronment of the forest does not admit of 
such ample development; yet even un- 
der such conditions the tulip tree pre- 
serves much of its elegance and is gen- 
erally well balanced. 

When young it does not appear to 
much advantage, being rather too sym- 
26 





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fiK$5 


Ls^*'*-* 


iKS^ 




p 


l?NB! 'W^fe^SH 




^c^ •- 







Tulip Trees 



FOREST TREES 



metrical. Nevertheless I have found 
it described as a tree of " great refine- 
ment of expression " at that age. As 
soon as it begins to put on a richer 
crown of foliage and to develop a stur- 
dier stem and more elegant lines in the 
disposition of its branches, it becomes 
invested with its peculiar aspect of 
magnificence, increasing in graceful- 
ness and grandeur from year to year. 
Its bark, at first smooth and gray, grad- 
ually becomes chiseled with sharp small 
cuts; then takes on a corrugated ap- 
pearance, becomes brown, and finally 
turns into deeply furrowed ridges in 
the old tree. Now the foliage, too, 
seems to clothe the massive boughs 
more fitly, being denser and in size of 
leaves more in accordance with the 
increased dimensions of the tree. 
27 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

The foliage of the tulip tree is, in 
truth, one of its principal points of 
beauty, and is inferior only to the state- 
liness of its form. The opening leaf- 
buds are conical, exquisitely modeled, 
and of the tenderest green. The 
leaves unfold from them much as do 
the petals in a flower, but quickly 
spread apart on the stem. As they 
grow larger they still preserve their 
light-green color, but take on a mild 
gloss. They are ready to shift and 
tremble on their long leaf-stalks in 
every breath of wind, which gives 
them a decided air of cheerfulness. 
"We may see the same thing in the 
aspen and in some of the poplars. Un- 
der the tulip tree, however, the light 
that descends and spreads out on the 
ground is far superior. It is softer 
28 



FOREST TREES 



and purer. We need not look up to 
appreciate it, but may watch it on the 
soil, over which it moves in flecks of 
light and dark. 

" The chequer' d earth seems restless as a 

flood 
Brushed by the winds, so sportive is the 

light 
Shot through the boughs ; it dances, as 

they dance, 
Shadow and sunshine intermingling 

quick, 
And dark'ning, and enlightening (as the 

leaves 
Play wanton) every part." 



THE CONE-BEAREBS 

The cone-bearing trees are usually 
provided with needle-shaped or awl- 
shaped leaves, in contradistinction to 
the broad and flat ones that belong 
29 



FOKEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

to the group described in the preced- 
ing section of this chapter. Most of 
them preserve their foliage through 
the winter, and are commonly recog- 
nized by this evergreen habit. They 
are much more important to the for- 
ester than the other class. The coni- 
fers grow on' the true forest soils. 
They range along mountain crests or 
are scattered over dry and semi-arid 
regions or along the sandy seashore, 
while the broadleaf species usually 
require a better soil and a more 
congenial climate. This circumstance 
causes many deciduous forests to be 
cut down, in order that the better land 
on which they grow may be utilized 
for agricultural purposes. Moreover, 
the wood of the conifers is generally 
more useful, being in several of the 
30 



FOEEST TKEES 



species of great economic importance. 
Lastly, in their habit of denser growth, 
and from the fact that these trees are 
ordinarily found in the form of " pure " 
forests (in contradistinction to those 
forests in which a number of species 
grow intermingled), they furnish cer- 
tain very important conditions for prac- 
tical and successful forestry. 

The common white pine well de- 
serves to stand at the head of all the 
conifers or evergreens east of the Mis- 
sissippi. Though it once covered vast 
areas in more or less "pure" forests 
it has been largely cut away, and re- 
curring fires have generally prevented 
its return ; but in certain places it could 
even now be restored by careful treat- 
ment. At present the last remnants of 
these pineries are disappearing swiftly, 
31 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

and before the methods of the forester 
can be applied to such extensive areas, 
this valuable heritage will probably 
have vanished. Heretofore it has been 
to us Americans in the supply of wood 
what bread and water are in daily life. 
It has been hardly less valued by other 
nations, having been planted as a forest 
tree in Germany a full century ago. 

I cannot say what I admire most in 
the white pine ; whether it be the luxu- 
riance and purity of its foliage, or the 
very graceful spread of its boughs. 
There is hardly a tree that can equal 
it for softness and rich color. The 
tufts of needlelike leaves densely 
cover the upper surfaces of the spread- 
ing branches, and are of a mild, uni- 
formly pure olive-green. Seen from 
beneath they appear tangled in the 
32 



FOEEST TEEES 



beautifully interwoven twigs and 
stems. It is here that we first begin 
to notice the exquisite manner of the 
white pine. The boughs reach out 
horizontally, with here and there one 
that ascends or turns aside to assume 
a position exceptionally graceful and 
to fill out a space that seems specially 
to have been vacated for it. I speak 
of the white pine at the age preceding 
maturity, when it is in its full strength, 
but before it has attained the pictur- 
esqueness of old age. Following an 
easy curve, the branch divides at right 
and left into dozens of finer branch- 
lets, all extending forward and strain- 
ing, as it were, to reach the light; and 
these in turn lift up hundreds of twigs 
and little stems to enrich the upper sur- 
faces with bushy tufts of lithe green 
33 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

needles. The elegance of this habit 
in the white pine appears to advantage 
when we stand a little above it on a 
gentle slope and see the branches 
clearly defined against the surface of 
a lake below or some far-away gray 
cloud. 

Both in middle age and when it is 
old the white pine is a distinguished- 
looking tree. When young it is some- 
times elegantly symmetrical ; but more 
often, owing to a crowded position, it 
lacks the air of neatness that belongs 
to a few of the other pines and to most 
of the firs. At maturity it is a very 
impressive tree, especially in the dense 
forest, where it develops a tall, dark, 
stately stem. In its declining years 
the branches begin to break and fall 
away, no longer able to bear the weight 
34 




Character of the White Pine. 



FOKEST TBEES 



of heavy snows. This is often the 
time when it is most picturesque. 

The representatives of the white pine 
in the West are the silver pine and 
the sugar pine. Though both may be 
easily recognized as near relatives of 
the eastern species, either by the typical 
form of the cones or by the plan and 
structure of the foliage, each of the 
western trees possesses a majesty and 
beauty of its own. The silver pine is 
more compact in its branches than the 
white pine, and has somewhat denser and 
more rigid foliage. Its dark aspect is 
well suited to the mountains and ridges 
of the Northwest, where it commonly 
abounds. The sugar pine, which is the 
tallest of all pines, impresses us by its 
picturesque individuality. Its great 
perpendicular trunk not infrequently 
35 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

rises, clear of limbs, to the height of 
a hundred and fifty feet, and is sur- 
mounted by an open pyramidal crown 
of half that length, composed of long 
and slender branches that are full of 
motion. While the texture of the foli- 
age is not as delicate as in the white 
pine, it is smooth and elastic, and has 
an even bluish tinge that shows to great 
advantage when the needles are stirred 
by the wind. Its cones, which are of 
enormous size, hang in clusters from 
the extremities of the distant boughs, 
which droop beneath the unusual weight. 
Two of these cones, which I have lying 
before me, measure each nineteen inches 
in length. Well might Douglas, the 
botanist who named this tree, call it 
" the most princely of the genus." 
The longleaf pines of the Southern 
36 




HHH 



Sugar Pines 



Young Bull Pines in the foreground at the right 
and an Incense Cedar at the left. 



FOEEST TEEES 



States should be noticed for their pic- 
turesqueness. The Cuban pine is re- 
stricted to isolated tracts in the region 
of the Gulf and eastern Georgia. The 
loblolly pine and the longleaf pine, near 
relatives of the Cuban pine, cover ex- 
tensive tracts in low, level regions of 
the Southern States, and are most in- 
teresting in old age. Standing, it may 
be, on a sandy plain not far from the 
sea, among straggling palmettos, they 
lift their ample crowns well up on their 
tall, straight stems, and contort their 
branches into surprising forms ; so that, 
looking through their crowns at a dis- 
tance in the sfecf , hazy air of the South, 
with possibly a red sunset sky for a 
background, they are extremely fan- 
tastic and entertaining. 

There are two other pines that have 
37 



FOREST TEEES AND FOREST SCENERY 

a similar tortuous habit in the growth 
of their branches: the pitch pine of 
our eastern coast States and the lodge- 
pole pine of the Rocky Mountains. 
These, however, have an esthetic value 
for quite a different reason. In the 
case of the pitch pine it is due to 
a natural peculiarity otherwise rare 
among conifers; for, this tree has the 
power of sprouting afresh from the 
stump that has been left after cutting 
or forest fires, thus healing in time the 
raggedness and devastation resulting 
from necessity, neglect, or indifference. 
The lodgepole pine of the West per- 
forms the same patient work over burned 
areas through the remarkable power 
of germination belonging to its seeds, 
even after being scorched by fire. 
Thus both of these trees not only fur- 
38 



FOEEST TKEES 



nish useful material, but restore health 
and calmness to the forest. 

In connection with the longleaf pines 
of the Southern States, the bull pine 
of the "West deserves to be noticed on 
account of its rear botanical relation- 
ship and the somewhat similar economic 
position which it occupies. It is the 
most widely distributed of western 
trees, being found in almost every kind 
of soil and climate along the Pacific 
coast and throughout the Rockies. 
Over so wide a range, growing under 
very different conditions of soil, tem- 
perature, light, and moisture, it varies 
greatly in form and appearance. We 
encounter it on dry, sterile slopes or 
elevated plateaux in the interior, and 
walk for miles through the monotony 
of these dark bull pine forests, in which 
39 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

the trees are of small stature and seem 
to be struggling for their life. Again 
we meet it on the humid western slopes 
of the Sierra Nevada, associated with 
the sugar pine and other lofty trees. 
Here we scarcely recognize it. It holds 
its own among the company of giants, 
and is full of vitality, freedom, and 
strength; with brighter, redder bark 
and stout, sinuous branches; with 
longer needles and larger cones. The 
sunlight fills its ample crown spaces, 
and the wind murmurs in the foliage 
overhead; for the pines are the master 
musicians of the woods. 

The Southern States and the Gulf 
region furnish us with a conifer of 
striking originality and great useful- 
ness. This is the bald cypress, which 
may have caught the reader's eye in 
40 




The Bull Pine in its California Home 



FOREST TREES 



some northern park by the elegant 
forms of its spirelike growth. It rises 
high and erect, a narrow pyramid 
clothed in the lightest green foliage. 
The latter is composed of delicate fea- 
thers of little elliptical leaves that hang 
drooping among the finely interwoven 
short branches. This is in its culti- 
vated northern home, where it seems to 
thrive well on the carefully kept green- 
sward. But in reality it is a tree of 
deep swamps, seeking the dank, flooded 
shores of southern rivers, or impene- 
trable morasses, where few other trees 
can live. Here we may paddle our 
boat through the strange-looking cy- 
press knees that it sends up above the 
water from the roots in the muddy soil 
beneath, and may admire the straight, 
firm trunks that are ridged and but- 
41 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

tressed below to form wide, spreading 
bases. In this, its native home, when 
it has grown to maturity, it looks far 
different from the trim, tall pyramid 
that we see in the park. In place of the 
lofty spire it bears a broad, flat crown, 
that is poised upon the tall, fibrous, 
reddish-gray trunk. Such crowns, 
if the tree has had room to spread, 
may measure as much as a hundred 
feet across; but where closely pressed 
at the sides by other trees, they are 
contracted to much narrower dimen- 
sions. The foliage is soft in texture 
as ever, and interspersed with little 
globular cones. "With the coming of 
winter, however, the sprays of foliage 
turn brown and fall from the tree, the 
bald cypress being one of the very few 
cone-bearers that shed their leaves. 
42 



FOREST TREES 



In the South, especially in Florida 
and along the Gulf, the cypress trees 
are likely to be overloaded with stream- 
ers of gray, mosslike tillandsia. This 
epiphytic plant, commonly known as 
"Florida moss" or "hanging moss," 
sometimes hides the entire mass of 
foliage, and lends a funereal aspect 
to whole groves and forests of these 
trees, detracting much from their 
beauty. 

One of the prettiest coniferous trees 
in the East is the hemlock. Whatever 
may be the prejudice against the com- 
mercial qualities of this tree, — for the 
value of its wood is not now appre- 
ciated as it should be, — its appear- 
ance is admired by all who know it. I 
call it " pretty " because it is fine and 
neat when young and grows to be 
43 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

comely and graceful in middle age, 
rather than beautiful in the ordinary 
meaning of that word. It is an easy, 
airy tree. And yet the time comes 
when it loses its ease and grace, when 
its trunk grows darker and its boughs 
become straggly and rough, when it 
puts on the strength of age without its 
decrepitude and bears unflinchingly the 
weight of winter snows. Is it now less 
interesting than in its youth? I think 
not. It makes the woods rough and 
natural, and we admire its simplicity, 
self-sufficiency, and endurance. 

When young there is no tree with 
such elegant and yet loose and pretty 
effects in the foliage, unless it should 
be one of its western cousins. The 
spray hangs delicately from the sides 
of the tree and the top is gracefully 
44 



FOREST TREES 



pendent. The little shoots, as they 
peep out from hundreds of recesses, 
buoyant and lifelike, and the pendent 
top, are in some way suggestive of a 
playing fountain, especially in quite 
young trees. In the forest the symme- 
try of the hemlock is not always pre- 
served; yet it fits into the scene grace- 
fully, whether fringing the mountain 
stream or grouping itself among the 
other trees of the forest. 

The two western hemlocks also have 
exceedingly graceful sprays and majes- 
tic forms, but they are less familiar 
to most of us and are not as widely 
distributed as the smaller eastern 
species. 

One of the trees of widest geograph- 
ical range in America is the red cedar, 
or red juniper, as it should more prop- 
45 



FOKEST TEEES AND FOREST SCENERY 

erly be called. This statement remains 
true notwithstanding the recent dis- 
covery that the form of red juniper 
common to certain parts of the Rockies 
is distinct from the eastern tree. 
Though of small size, except in the 
bottom lands of Arkansas and Texas, 
it possesses some excellent qualities 
and is useful in many ways. It is 
sometimes used in cabinet work, and 
is one of the best materials for fence 
posts. The variety that grows along 
the Florida coast furnishes the wood 
for the indispensable lead pencil. 

The red juniper is at its best along 
the border of the forest or where it 
strays a short distance away. Its foli- 
age is dark and bushy, and infinitely 
tender and soft in appearance. In the 
lower Appalachian region it forms a 
46 



FOEEST TEEES 



fine setting for the gorgeous drifts of 
dogwood and redbud that sMrt the for- 
est edges. It forms changeful and 
interesting groups on the rocky knolls 
and ledges. On our Jersey shores 
it has a tasteful way of gathering 
into little companies, just near enough 
to the forest to belong to it, com- 
posing scenes that are pleasant to re- 
member. Singly, on the yellow sands, 
the young conical red juniper edges 
off well against the sky. In its old 
age the same tree looks gnarled and 
picturesque, but still beautiful, with its 
masses of small blue-gray berries. 3 
Many of us remember it so by the edge 
of the ocean, and perhaps others, like 
myself, have allowed their imagination 
to drift and have fancied that it looked 
solemn and thoughtful, outlined against 
47 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

the pale-blue sky, listening to the swish 
and whisper of the sea. 

Several cone-bearing trees of the 
"Western States remain to be consid- 
ered. These are the firs and spruces, 
which belong to the same class as the 
pines; and the big tree and redwood, 
relatives of the bald cypress. 

The Douglas spruce, or red fir, is in 
reality neither a true spruce nor a fir, 
though it has some of the character- 
istics of each. It was discovered as 
long ago as 1795 by the famous ex- 
plorer, Archibald Menzies. This spe- 
cies and a smaller one that grows on 
the arid mountains of southern Cali- 
fornia, with possibly a third that is 
found in Japan, constitute together 
the whole genus Pseudotsuga. But 
whatever its botanical peculiarities, the 
48 



FOEEST TEEES 



red fir is an important and exceedingly 
useful tree, especially for the purposes 
of practical and scientific forestry. Like 
the white pine it was planted long ago 
by those pioneers in forestry, the Ger- 
mans, and has proved itself among them 
to be one of the few trees of foreign 
extraction that can be called successful. 
When young, the red fir grows rap- 
idly and symmetrically, and has a 
fresh, vigorous, healthy look. It then 
already possesses the bluish depth to 
its foliage that it preserves throughout 
life, a color that is comparable in its 
purity only to that of the white pine. 
In several of its other features, how- 
ever, it changes with the lapse of 
years. It gradually loses the graceful 
lower boughs that feather to the 
ground in the young tree; its bark 
49 



FOKEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

becomes rough and very thick ; and its 
trunk develops into a tall, straight 
shaft that bears a long, spiry crown of 
striking symmetry, in which tier after 
tier of branches rises to the narrowing 
summit, ending some two or three hun- 
dred feet in air. This is its aspect in 
the favored regions of its growth, near 
the shores of Puget Sound and in the 
moist mountains of Washington and 
Oregon, where it once formed forests 
of extraordinary density and dark 
grandeur, portions of which are still 
preserved over this extensive territory. 
Another important conifer is the 
lowland fir of the Pacific coast. All 
the silver firs, to which class this tree 
belongs, have distinct features in their 
foliage and a characteristic habit of 
growth, a description of which may 
50 




A Silver Fir at Middle Age 



FOEEST TEEES 



enable the reader to picture to himself 
not only the lowland fir itself, but to 
form some conception of the esthetic 
value of the entire genus. 

The leaves are narrow, flat, and 
linear, usually about as long as a pin 
or a needle, glossy green on the upper 
side, and streaked with a longitudinal 
whitish line underneath. They are 
crowded horizontally at the right and 
left sides of the shoot or twig, like the 
hairs on the quill of a feather. The 
twigs themselves, and, in turn, the 
boughs and branches, have a similar 
tendency to assume a horizontal posi- 
tion; and thus the tree is built up in 
neat symmetrical stages, dwindling in 
size to the summit, and presenting the 
typical conical form of the cone-bearers. 

Let it not be presumed, however, 
51 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

that there is anything awkward or 
stiff in the appearance of the firs. 
Young firs are among the neatest 
and most elegant objects in a park. 
The smooth gray bark, the lifelike air 
in the distribution of the boughs and 
smaller branches, the glossy green as 
seen from the side or above, varied to 
a blue or gray when we stand beneath, 
redeem them from every charge of 
conventionality. 4 

The lowland fir as a young tree, 
and where it is afforded sufficient 
room, has more of the drooping, plume- 
like, graceful air than is usual with 
the members of this genus. The 
leaves are somewhat curled and scat- 
tered about the stem. Like most trees 
it becomes more expressive as it grows 
older and little by little rejects the 
52 



FOEEST TEEES 



features and traces of its earlier years. 
Its arms gradually bend inward, and 
the whole tree becomes more cylin- 
drical, till in its maturity it speaks 
freely through its broken and twisted 
boughs of storms and battles and in- 
sect ravages of long ago; yet it strives 
to cover its scars with luxuriant masses 
of verdure and numberless purplish 
cones — a truly magnificent spectacle 
of a hoary veteran of crisp and sturdy 
aspect. 

The Engelmann spruce, though a 
smaller tree than either the red fir or 
the lowland fir, is one of the most im- 
portant of the spruces. Its home is 
in the elevated regions of Colorado, 
whence it spreads westward and north- 
ward throughout the Rocky Mountains. 
Its well rounded bole is scaly with small 
53 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

cinnamon-red plates, and its foliage is 
composed of sharp, short, needlelike 
leaves, that bristle around the stem 
and are bluish-green in color. Its 
small brown cones droop from the ex- 
tremities of the boughs and mass 
themselves in the top of the tree. 
Like most of the spruces, this one 
climbs to high elevations. Many a 
wild mountain slope in the West is 
covered by the dense ranks of these 
straight, slender trees, with tapering 
spires that are green in summer and 
frosted with snow and rime in winter. 

The glory of our western forests, 
however, are the sequoias, those gigan- 
tic trees of California that have become 
widely famous. The two sequoias, the 
big tree of the Sierra Nevada and 
the redwood of the Pacific coast, con- 
54 



FOREST TREES 



stitute the last remnants of a mighty 
race that covered vast areas in North 
America and Europe in past geologi- 
cal ages. It is believed that then 
days are almost over, for the big tree 
groves are few in number and small in 
extent, and even these are falling rap- 
idly under the ax and saw. Nor does 
this species appear to reproduce itself 
easily; for, although numberless seeds 
fall from the old trees, they rarely 
sprout, and therefore are slow to re- 
place what has been taken away. The 
redwoods, too, are threatened with ex- 
tinction, though they still cover consid- 
erable tracts along the northern half of 
the California coast. They are coveted 
even more than the big trees and are 
disappearing with a rapidity that only 
modern industry has made possible. 
55 



FOREST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

Fortunately the redwood possesses 
two gifts of inestimable value that will 
prolong, but cannot perpetuate, its exis- 
tence. The unusual amount of mois- 
ture in its wood and the absence of 
pitch in the sap lessen the danger from 
fire; while the same remarkable trait 
that we noticed in the pitch pine, other- 
wise very rare in coniferous trees, of 
sprouting from dormant buds at the 
edge of the stump will replace, for a 
time at least, many of the giants that 
are taken away. 

The general appearance or type of 
the sequoias resembles that of the 
cypresses and cedars. The bald cy- 
press is their nearest relative. The 
big tree often has the same spreading 
base, and both have the fluted, shreddy 
bark, traits that may also be noticed in 
56 



FOREST TREES 



the common white cedar and in arbor- 
vitse. The diameter of the trunk of 
the big- tree is strikingly large even for 
its wonderful height. Both trees lift 
their crowns rather high, and have 
comparatively short boughs, with dense, 
bushy, somewhat straggly-looking fo- 
liage. In its youthful stage the foliage 
of the redwood, like its congener's, has 
a bluish tinge, which with advancing 
years turns to a dark and somber green 
that contrasts strangely with the red 
color of the thick, spongy bark. But 
the individuality of both trees, espe- 
cially that of the big tree, is so impres- 
sive and magnificent that all these minor 
essences become involved in the maj- 
esty of the whole. The mighty bole 
rises in splendid proportions to where 
the distant fronds hang loosely down, 
57 



FOEEST TKEES AND FOEEST SCENES Y 

disappearing within their somber shad- 
ows, but still carrying upward the 
masses of foliage, as if striving to reach 
the very clouds. As we view their 
stately and incomparable forms, so mas- 
terly wrought, so unapproachable in 
their magnificence, we need hardly be 
told that these trees are strangers from 
a distant and forgotten age. 

Much has been said and written con- 
cerning the sizes and ages of these two 
largest trees of America — indeed, with, 
the exception of the Australian euca- 
lipti, we might say of the world. It is 
said that some of the latter surpass the 
redwood in height, though a redwood 
tree was discovered within recent 
years on the Eel River, California, 
whose stupendous height reached 
nearly three hundred and fifty feet, 
58 



FOREST TEEES 



thus surpassing in that dimension, at 
least, any previously recorded measure- 
ments of the big tree. The ages of the 
sequoias have been more difficult to 
determine, but it appears that in the 
beginning they were exaggerated. The 
mature redwood, doubtless, is apt to be 
several centuries younger than the big 
tree; but so excellent an authority as 
Mr. John Muir has said of the latter 
that " these giants under the most fa- 
vorable conditions probably live five 
thousand years or more, though few of 
even the larger trees are more than 
half as old." 

The redwoods are great lovers of 
moisture. In the valleys and canyons 
near the ocean the}^ bathe in the ascend- 
ing fog and stand dripping with con- 
densed vapor. We shall come upon 
59 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

them in dense groves, where the day is 
a continuous twilight and the trees 
surpass in their combined massiveness 
even the red firs of Oregon. At other 
times we shall find them mingling in 
more open forest with lowland firs and 
hemlocks, or, in their northern range, 
with the splendid Port Orford cedar. 
The light enters these more open for- 
ests and calls forth much beautiful 
young growth and shrubbery: the 
rhododendrons of California, with large 
and showy purplish blossoms and ever- 
green leaves; western dogwoods, that 
might at first glance be mistaken for 
the eastern species; barberries and 
familiar hazels ; and ferns and violets. 
The reader must not infer, of course, 
that such scenes are necessarily of 
common occurrence in the forest; but 
60 



FOEEST TREES 



they are more agreeable to contemplate 
than those that have been despoiled of 
their attractions. It should be re- 
membered that if we traveled through 
these forests we should often find fresh 
signs of human interference: sections 
of trees lying prone on the ground, 
abandoned as useless by the lumber- 
man; stripped crowns that stood in the 
way of falling trunks, and debris of 
bark and slashings. We should also 
notice the track of the forest fire 
among the stumps and charred tree- 
trunks, and here and there the dying 
tops of standing trees that were un- 
able to withstand the flames. Fi- 
nally, in dry and semi-arid regions, 
particularly in sections of the South- 
west, we should notice still another 
danger that threatens our forests: 
61 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

the excessive or ill-timed grazing of 
sheep, which trample to death the 
young tree seedlings as they pass over 
the ground in great herds and devour 
the last vestiges of vegetation, thus 
leaving a bare and dry forest floor, 
upon which the old trees subsist 
with difficulty through the prolonged 
droughts of summer. 



62 




Courtesy of the Bureau of Forestry 

Where the Sheep Have Been 



II 

FOEEST ADORNMENT 

THOUGH there can be no forest 
without trees, it may be asserted 
with equal truth that trees alone would 
make but an incomplete forest. 5 Under 
the old trees we find the young sap- 
lings that are in future years to replace 
them and in their turn are to form a 
new canopy of shade. In their com- 
pany is a vast variety of shrubs, ferns, 
and delicate grasses and flowers that 
decorate the forest floor. Vines and 
creepers gather about the old trees 
and clamber up their furrowed trunks. 
In autumn the ground is strewed with 
63 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

fallen leaves, motionless or hurrying 
along before the wind. These gather 
into deep beds, soft to the tread, and 
at last molder away in the moist, rich 
earth. In the needle-bearing forests 
of the mountains brilliant green mosses 
replace the shrubs and flowers and deck 
the bare brown earth. 

There are lifeless sources of beauty in 
the woods, too, that are not easy to 
pass by unnoticed : rocks with interest- 
ing forms and surfaces; forms that are 
lifeless, yet take on distinct expression 
by their different modes of cleavage, 
and surfaces that drape themselves in 
the choicest paraphernalia of drooping 
moss and rare lichen; prattling moun- 
tain streams; cascades; and glassy 
pools. These are " inanimate " things 
with a kind of life in them, after all. 
64 



FOEEST ADOENMENT 



Lastly, there are the true owners of 
the forest: the bird that hovers round 
its borders; the free, chattering squir- 
rel; the casual butterfly that leads us to 
the flowers ; and the large game that in- 
habits the hidden recesses and adds an 
element of wildness and strange attrac- 
tion to these quiet haunts. 

All this wealth of detail gives life to 
the forest. The shrubs, above the rest, 
should here interest us somewhat more 
minutely. They are often the most con- 
spicuous objects in the embellishment of 
the forest; and since our investigation 
was to be guided to some extent by con- 
siderations of usefulness, it ought to be 
added that shrubs not infrequently exer- 
cise a beneficial influence on the vigor 
and well-being of the trees themselves. 
Trees, shrubs, and certain of the 



65 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

smaller plants — so long as their root 
systems are not too dense and intricate 
— are of value on account of their ame- 
liorative effects on temperature and 
moisture. This is more important in 
this country, so extreme in its climatic 
variations, than in northern Europe. 
In the dry and parching days of sum- 
mer the shrubbery of the woods, by 
its shade, helps to keep the earth cool 
and moist. This mantle of the earth, 
moreover, conducts the rain more grad- 
ually to the soil, exercising an efficient 
economy. In the fall and winter the 
shrubs, which are densest near the for- 
est border, help to break the force of 
the sweeping winds which might other- 
wise carry away the fallen leaves, so 
useful in their turn because they are 
conservators and regulators of mois- 
66 




Courtesy of the Bureau of Forestry 

Shrubbery and River Birches. New Jersey 



FOKEST ADOENMENT 



ture and contain valuable chemical con- 
stituents which they return to the soil. 
The pine barrens of New Jersey 
illustrate these principles. In close 
proximity to the sea a welcome mois- 
ture enters the forest with the ocean 
breezes. Penetrating farther inland, it 
is not so entirely dissipated as to pre- 
clude a varied undergrowth of shrub- 
bery, which in turn renders a welcome 
aid to the forest by the protection it af- 
fords to the porous, sandy soil, which 
would soon dry out under the scant 
shelter of the pervious pines. Under ^ 
neath these the kalmia or calico bush., 
with its large and showy bunches of 
flowers, is abundant. In late summer 
the sweet pepperbush is there, laden 
with its fragrant racemes ; in winter, the 
cheerful evergreen holly of glossy green 
67 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

leaf and bright berry. In the dry and 
snnny places we find the wild rose, the 
trailing blackberry, with its rich color 
traceries on the autnmn leaves, and the 
no less brilliant leaves of the wild straw- 
berries underfoot. We come upon the 
creeping wintergreen and the local 
"flowering moss." The fragrant "trail- 
ing arbutus," here as elsewhere, is 
an earnest of the generous returning 
spring. Along the creeks and brooks 
are masses of honeysuckles, alder 
bushes, and sweet magnolias. 

The coniferous forests of the Rocky 
Mountain region are either too dry or 
too elevated to promote a luxuriant 
undergrowth; but we find it in the 
humid coast region of Oregon and 
Washington, within the forests of fir, 
pine, and spruce. In the deciduous 
68 




Fern Patch in a Grove of White Birch 



FOEEST ADOKNMENT 



forests, however, the shrubbery attains 
its best development, for its presence 
depends largely upon moisture, climate, 
and soil, and these conditions are usu- 
ally most favorable in our broadleaf 
districts. In the latter, moreover, the 
shrubbery exercises its influence most 
efficiently, for many of the pines will 
bear a considerable amount of heat and 
drought, and several other conifers 
show their independence and a differ- 
ent kind of hardihood at high and 
humid elevations. The varied and 
beautiful forms of undergrowth in our 
broadleaf forests — the shrubs, the 
vines and graceful large ferns, and the 
smaller plants that live along the forest 
borders and penetrate within — may be 
regarded as one of the distinctive fea- 
tures of American forest scenery. 
69 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

In such forests, and along their bor- 
ders, the birds like to make their home. 
Among the bushy thickets they find a 
secure shelter, and some of them seek 
their food among the fruits and berries 
that grow there. They all possess their 
individual charms, and infuse such 
Varied elements of life and cheer into 
the woods that even the most common- 
place scenes are transmuted by their 
presence, while those that were already 
beautiful receive an added attraction. 
In winter there is nothing more har- 
monious than a flock of snowbirds fly- 
ing over frosted evergreens toward 
some soft gray mist or cloud. For 
grace and ease of movement I have 
never seen anything more airy than the 
Canada jay alighting on some near 
bough, softly as a snowflake, to watch 
70 



FOREST ADORNMENT 



and wait for the scraps of the fores- 
ter's meal. Another interesting bird 
to watch in his movements is the red- 
winged blackbird. Ont along the 
edges of the forest and in the swamps 
and marshes lying between bits of 
woodland, he may be seen from earliest 
spring to the last days of fall. 6 We 
cannot help watching him passing 
restlessly to and fro by himself, or cir- 
cling happily about in the flock, re- 
turning at last to his clumps of alders 
and willows, or disappearing among the 
hazy reeds and grasses. But if, in- 
stead of grace and movement, we are 
more interested in sound, we shall find 
no songbird with sweeter notes than 
the thrush. Whatever added name he 
may bear, we are sure of a fine quality 
of music ; music with modulating notes, 
71 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

plaintive and clear, that drive away all 
harshness of thought. 

Let us again consider the under- 
growth in the forest. Where shrubs 
and tender growths abound the wintry 
season cannot be desolate or dreary. 
When the display of summer is over 
they attract the eye by their bright 
fruits and their habits of growth. Their 
branchlets are often strikingly pretty in 
color and well set off against the snow. 
Their intricate traceries of twig and 
stem are an interesting study. The 
copses of brown hazels that spread 
along the mountain side and the dusky 
alders or yellow-tinted willows are in 
perfect harmony with this season of 
the year. 

It is by crowding into masses that 
our shrubs of brighter blossom produce 
72 



FOBEST ADORNMENT 



some of the most superb effects of 
spring. A multitude of rhododen- 
drons or great laurels covers some 
mountain side, carrying its drifts of pale 
rose far back into the woods. A mass 
of redbuds and flowering dogwoods, 
the former again rose-colored, the latter 
a creamy white, pours out from the 
forest's edge among ledges of rock and 
low hills. The wild plums and thorns, 
with their delicate flowers, are beauti- 
ful in the same manner, and in addition 
have a pretty habit of straying out and 
away from the woods, much like the 
red juniper. 

Our shrubs are no less beautiful in 
their separate parts than they are mag- 
nificent in their united profusion. The 
common sweet magnolia is especially 
well favored. Its elegantly elliptical 
73 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

leaf, with smooth surfaces, glossy and 
dark green above, silken and silvery 
below, is one of the most attractive to 
be found. Its flower cannot help being 
beautiful, for beauty is the heritage of 
all the magnolias. Often, however, 
half the pure ivory cups lie hidden in 
the leaves, to surprise us on a closer 
approach with their beauty and sweet 
fragrance. Altogether this favored 
shrub is one of the most exquisite ob- 
jects of decoration, whether in the 
swamp, along brooksides, or through 
the damp places of the forest. 

The hawthorns, which, like the 
sweet magnolia, occur both as trees 
and as shrubs, combine varied forms 
of attractiveness, such as compound 
flowers of white or pinkish hue; sharply 
edged, elegantly pointed leaves; bright 
74 



FOREST ADORNMENT 



berries ; and closely interwoven branch- 
lets stuck about with thorns. The red- 
bud, which I have already mentioned, 
holds its little bunches of flowers so 
lightly that they look as if they had 
been carried there by the wind and had 
caught along the twigs and branches. 
Yery different from these, yet no less 
interesting in its way, is the staghorn 
sumach, which is of erratic growth 
and bears stately pyramids of velvety 
flowers of a dark crimson-maroon. 
There is a fine contrast, too, where the 
serviceberry, with early delicate white 
blossoms, blooms among the evergreens 
and the opening leaves of spring. 

Another word about the "West. The 
undergrowth of the northerly portion 
of the Pacific coast region has al- 
ready been referred to; but there ex- 
75 



FOKEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

tends throughout the Southwest, pene- 
trating also northward and eastward, 
another kind of forest growth that is 
so distinct in character from all others 
that it should be specially described. 
It is, in fact, quite opposite in its na- 
ture to the shrubbery of the more humid 
forest regions in that it shows a tend- 
ency to seek the arid, open, sunny 
slopes, where it forms a scrubby, though 
interesting, and varied cover to the 
rough granite boulders and loose, 
gravelly soils. This growth is every- 
where conveniently known as "chap- 
arral," whether it be the low, even- 
colored brush on the higher mountains 
or the dense, scraggy, promiscuous, 
and impenetrable thicket of the foot- 
hills and lower and gentler slopes. 
The impression which the chaparral 
76 



FOREST ADORNMENT 



makes depends largely upon the dis- 
tance at which it is viewed. If we 
stand in the midst of a dense patch of 
it we see of how many elements it is 
composed; how the shrubs of different 
size, shape, and character crowd each 
other into a tangle of branches, some 
not reaching above the waist, others 
closing in overhead. The ceano- 
thus, with its dull, dark-green foliage 
and bunches of small white flowers, 
which appear in June, stands beside 
the stout- stemmed, knotty, twisted 
manzanita, with its strikingly reddish- 
brown bark and sticky, orbicular, olive- 
colored leaves. Among smaller shrubs 
we find the aromatic sage brush, of a 
light-gray, soft appearance, and the 
richer, darker, small-leaved grease- 
wood, or chemisal, as it is more com- 
77 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

monly called farther north, with its 
small, white-petaled flowers enclosing 
a greenish-yellow center. Very plen- 
tifully scattered among all these we 
usually find the scrubby forms of the 
canyon live oak and the California 
black oak. Here and there we may 
see a large golden-flowered mallow, or 
the queenly yucca raising its fine pyra- 
mid of cream-colored flowers out of 
the dense mass. 

The far view is quite different. 
Distance smoothes the surface and 
somewhat obliterates the colors, though 
we may still distinguish a variegated 
appearance. The eye takes in the 
larger outlines and the scattered pines 
that sometimes occur within the chap- 
arral. ^Nor is the latter, as we now per- 
ceive, always a dense growth, but may 
78 




A Yucca in the Chaparral 



FOREST ADORNMENT 



be separated here and there. Indeed, 
it is often most interesting when inter- 
rupted by large granite boulders and 
jumbles of rocks, with the clean gray 
shade of which it forms a fine contrast 
on a clear morning. 

If we look still farther up toward 
some higher slopes, miles away, we 
shall see only a uniform and contin- 
uous stretch of low brush that appears 
at that great distance hardly otherwise 
than a green pasture clothing the bar- 
ren mountain. As we walk toward it 
the bluish-green changes to a bronze- 
green, and then suddenly we recognize 
the broad sweep of chemisal, with a 
few scattered scrubby oaks and moun- 
tain mahogany in between. 

In the account of forest embellish- 
ment should be included those hum- 
79 



FOREST TEEES AND FOREST SCENERY 

blest plants, the liverworts and mosses 
and the lichens that so beautifully 
stain the rocks and color the stems of 
trees. A close study of all their deli- 
cate and tender characters, both of 
form and color, is always a revelation. 
Among these lowlier plants it is no 
uncommon sight in the depth of win- 
ter to see a field of fern sending a 
thousand elegant sprays through the 
light snow-covering; or half a dozen 
kinds of mosses, all of different green, 
but every one pure and brilliant, 
gleaming in the shadow of some drip- 
ping rock. Between the rock and 
its ice cap, covered by the latter but 
not concealed from view, there is a 
fine collection of the most delicate 
little liverworts and grasses, herbs with 
tender leaves, and even flowers, it may 
80 






FOKEST ADORNMENT 



be, on some earthy speck where the sun 
has melted the ice — all as if held in 
cold crystal. 

A word also remains to be said 
about the vines and creepers. As far 
north as Pennsylvania, and even to the 
States bordering the Great Lakes, 
these clambering plants are a conspic- 
uous element in the forest. Virginia 
creeper, clematis, the hairy-looking 
poison oak, and the wild grape, are 
among those that are most familiar. 
In the woods of the lower Mississippi 
Valley the wild grapevines often make 
a strange tangle among the old and 
twisted trees and hang in long fes- 
toons from the boughs. They are not 
uncommon in some of the northerly 
States, though less rank and exuberant 
in growth. 

81 



FOEEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

The common ivy is one of the most 
beautiful of all creepers. It makes a 
fine setting for the little wood flowers 
that peep from its leaves. I like it 
best, however, where it clings to some 
old oak or other tree and brings out the 
contrast between its own passiveness 
and weakness and the strength of the 
column that gives it support. 



82 



Ill 

DISTRIBUTION OF AMEEIOAN 
FOKESTS 

THE geographical distribution of 
trees has been referred to occa- 
sionally in the preceding chapters. 
This distribution, gradually accom- 
plished during the progress of ages, 
has not been accidental; on the con- 
trary, it has been due to natural causes, 
and arises out of the special needs and 
adaptations of each species. The geol- 
ogy of a region, which determines in 
many respects the character of the phy- 
sical forces of both the earth and the air, 
is no small factor in the development 
83 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

of the forest. The character of the 
climate, the nature of the soil, the de- 
gree of moisture in the soil and in the 
atmosphere, the amount and intensity 
of the sunlight — in short, the various 
elements and natural forces that con- 
stitute the environment of a tree — are 
the all-important conditions of its life. 
On these it depends, and according to 
its own peculiar nature and its special 
needs, selects its natural home. 

Yet the manner in winch this selec- 
tion is accomplished, though simple in 
theory, is complicated by many circum- 
stances. Frost, fire, insects, and floods, 
by destroying the trees or their seeds, 
may retard the progress of the species. 
The wind may be unfavorable. The 
seeds hang upon the trees ready and 
ripe for germination, but a breeze comes 
84 



DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN FORESTS 

along and carries them to a place where 
the conditions are ill adapted to their 
peculiar nature. The following year 
the wind is propitious and the little 
trees soon start into life. But presently 
the seeds of another tree, whose growth 
is by nature faster, are conveyed to the 
same spot, and the intruders outstrip 
the others in rapidity of growth and 
spread a canopy of foliage that screens 
the smaller trees from the life-giving 
sun and dooms them to destruction. 
Thus only a few of the numberless 
seeds that are produced each year live, 
and fewer still are able to maintain or 
extend the boundaries of the parent 
tree. Sometimes, too, the frugality or 
hardiness of a species may be the rea- 
son for its exclusive occupation of a 
certain locality, since other trees may 
85 



FOEEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

find it impossible to live at high alti- 
tudes and on rocky ridges or to subsist 
upon rough, poor soil. Consequently 
we shall find some kinds of trees ex- 
clusive, gregarious only among them- 
selves, while others mingle freely in 
the general concourse. 

Through the persistency, therefore, 
of the vital forces of nature, through 
a suitable climate or situation, through 
the power of adaptation and the deli- 
cate adjustment of many details, the 
vast armies of trees, like migratory 
races, have at last accomplished their 
purpose and found their several homes ; 
and to us the varied aspect of the for- 
ests, as we traverse the extended terri- 
tory of our country, is in a manner 
explained. There are stretches of land 
over which the tree growth is dense 
86 



DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN FORESTS 

and uniform ; where the forest is given 
over, it may be, almost entirely to a 
single kind of tree. In other places 
the trees may join in varied luxuriance, 
young and old, familiar and strange, on 
some fertile, protected plain or well 
watered mountain side. In still other 
places they may be seen struggling up 
the steep slopes and maintaining a 
precarious existence on bleak, rocky 
ridges. 

While the eastern portion of the 
United States is, generally speaking, 
the home of the broadleaf species, and 
the northern and western portions are 
similarly occupied by the coniferous 
forests, these areas may readily be sub- 
divided into specified regions of distinct 
forest growth. The latter, however, 
cannot be accurately delimited, since 
87 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

the regions naturally penetrate into one 
another and overlap, on account of the 
manner in which forests have extended 
their bounds. 

In the basin of the Great Lakes, 
where the glaciers of a recent geologi- 
cal age have prepared a light, loose, 
gravelly or sandy soil, the white pine 
belt extends through the States of Min- 
nesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and 
penetrates into portions of Pennsyl- 
vania, Hew York, and New England. 
Once covered with dense tall forests 
of white pine, interspersed in places 
with other northern conifers, or broken 
by smaller areas of broadleaf forests, 
the white pine belt has now yielded 
to us its richest treasures. The exact- 
ing demands of our modern artificial 
civilization have drawn ceaselessly upon 
88 



DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN FOEESTS 

these resources, and the assiduous ax 
and the fire that follows in its train 
have invaded even the most secluded 
regions. The resulting barren spaces, 
where they have not become cultivated 
land, have either reverted to the young 
white pine itself or have been trans- 
formed into oak barrens and open 
forests of broadleaf trees. Thus the 
aspect of the region has been altered, 
though many a limited spot may be 
found in which the tall majesty of the 
primeval forest still finds its full ex- 
pression. 

Extending from southern New Eng- 
land along the entire range of the 
Appalachians, sloping toward the At- 
lantic, and spreading far westward to 
the Mississippi and beyond, the region 
of the eastern broadleaf forests covers 
89 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

a vast territory. Not that the conifers 
are here entirely absent, for several of 
these, including the white pine itself, 
follow the mountain ranges and scat- 
ter throughout the hills and plains; 
but their number dwindles in the pro- 
portion of the whole. 

Beyond this region to the southward, 
in the States that border the Gulf 
east of the Mississippi, in Georgia, 
and stretching along the coast north- 
ward, a region of pines is once more 
encountered. This section of our 
forests, though it has already yielded 
generous supplies, is among the richest 
in the country. From the pineries of 
the South is obtained much of our con- 
struction timber; and thence, too, we 
derive our pitch, tar, and turpentine 
from the sap of the trees. 
90 



DISTRIBUTION OF AMEBIC AN FOBESTS 

Finally, within the eastern forests a 
restricted region at the southern end of 
Florida, including the Keys, may prop- 
erly be separated from the rest. For 
here is found a distinctively tropical 
vegetation, differing entirely in char- 
acter from the forest flora to the north. 
Many trees indigenous to the West 
India Islands have established them- 
selves upon this small area, on which 
the number of species exceeds that of 
any region of equal extent within the 
United States, not excepting even the 
varied forest growth of the Mexican 
border line, to which alone it might be 
worthily compared. 

Separating the forest floras of the 

western and eastern United States, lies 

the broad region of prairies and plains. 

Though trees are found for the greater 

91 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

part only along the banks of streams, 
this region has a curious interest for 
the forester. It is believed by many 
that this wide country, now waving in 
grain and grass and covered with ex- 
tensive farms, was at one time enriched 
with scattered forests; but that these 
have disappeared under the ravages 
of repeated fires, kindled, it is sup- 
posed, chiefly by the Indians. At 
present our own race is perseveringly 
reclothing these prairie lands with 
groves and avenues of trees, and 
is planting belts of them about farms 
and orchards for protection from hot or 
frosty winds. Thus the fringed bor- 
ders of the streams are widening. The 
outcome of this activity is a development 
that stands in marked contrast with the 
hurried consumption of our other forests. 
92 



DISTEIBUTION OF AMEEICAN FOEESTS 

Then, lastly, there lies beyond this 
region the vast territory of the Rockies 
and the ranges of the Pacific coast. 
Extending over so great a part of 
our country, the forests of this region 
exhibit many transitions that reveal 
the intimate relations between trees 
and their natural environment; yet 
here we cannot but notice the enor- 
mous preponderance of the coniferous 
over the broadleaf trees. Indeed, it 
amounts almost to an exclusion of the 
latter; for, while some of the poplars 
and willows and several species of 
oaks and a few maples are indigenous 
to this part of the country, the last 
two in particular to portions of Cali- 
fornia, other broadleaf trees are mere 
stragglers in the land. 

The forests of the West retain much 
93 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

more of the flavor of wildness than do 
those of the East, though they likewise 
show many evidences of the hand of 
man. It is true that paths and roads 
lead from many familiar resorts into 
these mountain forests, that there are 
signs of the lumber industry and of 
fires, and that there are large barren 
areas where sheep have been contin- 
uously driven for pasture. Extensive 
as this interference with original condi- 
tions has been, however, the changed 
aspect of the forest has not always 
remained permanent, because nature, 
where it is possible, comes back pa- 
tiently to restore life and beauty to the 
wasted places. Over lofty ranges and 
in inaccessible places we may still find 
the original forest bequeathed to us 
from early days ; but not in such places 
94 



DISTRIBUTION OF AMERICAN FORESTS 

only: for if we look closely we shall also 
recognize the old character and expres- 
sion in the harvested forests that have 
long since been deserted and forgotten 
and at last returned, like lost children, 
to the fostering care of their mother. 

The forests of the West may be fitly 
separated into two parts. The greater 
part embraces the Rocky Mountain 
ranges, while the other extends from 
the crests of the Sierra Nevada to the 
sea. In the former the forests are 
sometimes open in character and sepa- 
rated by parks or grassy plains, or they 
constitute a scattered tree growth on 
the high altitudes of the rougher ridges. 
This open character is sometimes due 
to devastation by fires, but generally it 
is the result of climatic conditions. 
And yet there are wide tracts and 
95 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

spaces within this region that bear 
dense forests, notwithstanding the bar- 
ren soil and the anstere climate; for- 
ests that have been but little or in no 
wise disturbed, and whose expression 
differs in an unmistakable manner 
from the opener growth of the broad- 
leaf forests of the East. 

Denser than these and more awe- 
inspiring are the forests of the States 
bordering the Pacific. Here the mois- 
ture from the sea, an equable climate, and 
a generous soil, have produced the tall 
and somber red firs, the stately hemlocks 
and cedars, the redwoods of the coast, 
and the consummate beauty and mag- 
nificence of those opener groves of big 
trees, sugar pines, and bull pines, that 
have always commanded the admiration 
and wonder of visitors to that region. 
96 



IV 

CHAEACTEE OF THE BEOADLEAF 
FOEESTS 

IF the individual trees of the two 
main groups that were described in 
the opening chapter impress us differ- 
ently as they belong to the one or the 
other, it will be found that the two 
kinds of forests likewise convey dis- 
tinct impressions. Different in aspect, 
they are also distinguished one from 
the other by the different atmosphere 
or spirit that pervades them. Taking 
leave here of the trees as individuals, I 
shall now examine the characteristics 
of woodland scenery. 
97 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

It has been said that the broadleaf 
trees grow naturally over a wide extent 
of territory. Of the unbroken wilder- 
nesses that covered the eastern parts of 
our country when it began to be colo- 
nized, only fragments remain. A few 
States are still densely wooded, but in 
these the forces which have caused 
the disappearance of similar forests in 
other regions have now begun to assert 
themselves. Some will yield to their 
old enemy, the ravaging fire that could 
so often be prevented ; others must ulti- 
mately recede to make way for agri- 
culture; many will be removed more 
rapidly for the sake of their material. 
It is confidently to be expected, how- 
ever, in view of the widening influ- 
ence forestry is exerting, that where 
it is desirable a provision will be 



CHAEACTEE OF BEOADLEAF FOEESTS 

made for a future growth to replace 
the present one. 

Of the broadleaf forests there are 
many types. There are forests of oak 
and chestnut, of maple and beech; dry 
upland forests, and the tangled woods 
of the swamps. There are young thick- 
ets of birch and aspen, of willow and 
alder, and scrubby oak barrens. There 
are second-growth forests, and now 
and then even a patch of fine old virgin 
timber. In size, also, there is a great 
difference, from the grove that covers 
the hilltop to the unbroken forest that 
stretches over an entire mountain 
range. 

It appears, therefore, that variety is 
one of the marked characteristics of 
our eastern woods. As several hun- 
dred different kinds of trees enter into 
LofC. 99 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

their composition under every form and 
modification of circumstance, we find 
in these woods an endless novelty 
and perennial freshness. The young 
swamp growth of red maple, white 
birch, and alder, bedded in grass and 
wild flowers, is very different from the 
dense young forest of birch and aspen 
of the northern woods that, under the 
influence of ample light, has sprung 
into being after some recent fire, the 
signs of which are still visible in the 
charred stumps under the young trees. 
The open groves of old oak and chest- 
nut on the hill, with the slanting light of 
autumn and deep beds of dry, rustling 
leaves, are likewise different from the 
secluded forest in unfrequented moun- 
tains, where young and old growth 
mingle together: crooked ashes and 
100 



CHAEACTEE OF BEOADLEAF FOEESTS 

moss-covered elms with straight young 
hickories, with shrubs and vines, and 
little seedlings sprouting among the 
rocks and mosses. 

If we were to proceed in a continuous 
journey from the staid forests of the 
North to the more diversified growth 
of the intermediate States, and, going 
on, were to visit the complex forests 
of the South, we should notice only a 
very gradual transition. Yet if we 
were to study any particular region 
within these larger areas it would be 
found to have certain definite charac- 
teristics. 

Let us imagine ourselves standing, 
for instance, on some point of van- 
tage in the Blue Ridge of Virginia, 
the season being early May. The 
view extends across ranges of low, 
101 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

rounded mountains, which are fresh 
with the new foliage of spring. On the 
nearest hills the individual trees and 
their combinations into groups can be 
distinguished; but receding into the 
valleys and more distant slopes the 
forms and colors grow less distinct, till 
the tone becomes darker and at last 
melts into the familiar hazy blue of 
the distant hills. Looking again at the 
nearer hillsides, we recognize the tulip 
trees with their shapely crowns, clothed 
in a soft green and lifted somewhat 
above the general outline. The light 
green of the opening elms and sweet 
gums can be very well distinguished 
beyond the more shadowy beeches, 
ashes, and maples. The remaining 
spaces are occupied by hickories and 
chestnuts, still brown and leafless, and 
102 



CHAEACTEE OF BEOADLEAF FOEESTS 

by rusty-hued oaks, which are only 
just beginning to break their buds. 
Within the leafless portions of the wood 
an occasional dash of bright yellow or 
creamy white, not quite concealed, 
shows where the sassafras or dogwood 
is in bloom. The crests and ridges, 
however, are likely to be occupied by 
groups and bands of pines, while the 
sides of the mountain brook will be 
studded with cedars and hemlocks. 

In such scenery, if it be natural, 
there is no vulgarity and no faultiness 
of design. With all the variety there 
is still a fitness in form, color, and ex- 
pression. It is rough, but pure in 
taste. For instance, the pine groves 
on the mountain ridges are not sharply 
defined in their margins and thus sepa- 
rated from the rest of the forest, but 
103 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

they gradually merge with the neigh- 
boring trees in a way that was naturally 
foreshadowed in the conformation of 
the land and the composition of the soil. 
A feature so natural and self-evi- 
dent may hardly appear worthy of no- 
tice ; but its value is appreciated as soon 
as we compare the outlines referred 
to with the rigid forms of some of the 
artificial forests of Europe. Those 
who have seen the checkered forests 
of Germany, where the design of the 
planted strip of trees, like a patch 
upon the mountain, is unmistakable, 
will readily note the contrast between 
the natural and the artificial type. 
Neither is there any striving for effect 
in the natural forest, an error not un- 
common in the tree groupings of parks 
or private estates. In these an effort 
104 



CHAEACTEB OF BEOADLEAF EOEESTS 

is sometimes made to produce an im- 
pression by contrasts in form and color, 
but too often the outcome is mere con- 
spicuousness; while nature, in some 
subtle way, has touched the true chord. 
Forest scenery, however, need not be 
as extensive as this in order to add ap- 
preciably to the beauty of landscape. In 
the valley of southern Virginia, among 
the peach orchards and sheep farms, 
low hills lie scattered on both sides of 
the valley road. The mountain ranges 
beyond them recede to a great distance, 
and are partly hidden from view by 
these intervening hills. The latter, 
however, are decked with bits of wood- 
land: groves of oak, chestnut, and 
beech, where the horseman on sunny 
summer days finds a welcome coolness 
and shade. Would these sylvan spots 
105 



FOEEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

be missed if they were to be removed? 
They now exercise a beneficial influ- 
ence on the drainage and moisture 
conditions of the surrounding farm- 
lands, and they supply some of the 
home wants of the farmers. But they 
have an esthetic value also. They are 
usually in neat and healthy condition, 
and, viewed either from within or 
without, they are balm to the eyes as 
they lie scattered promiscuously over 
the hills. 

It is hardly two hundred miles by 
road from that region to the high 
mountains of the North Carolina and 
Tennessee border, where we find broad- 
leaf forests of the wildest and roughest 
kind. These happily still possess the 
great charm of undisturbed nature. 
The small mountain towns lie scat- 
106 



CHARACTER OF BROADLEAF FORESTS 

tered far apart. The region is even 
bleak and dreary — at least until the 
summer comes; but when everything 
turns green the season is glorious. As 
we ride through these woods we real- 
ize the majesty of their stillness and 
strength, and cannot help admiring the 
great oaks and chestnuts that contend 
for the ground, succumbing only after 
centuries in the strife. 

While the broadleaf forests of 
western North Carolina and eastern 
Tennessee are characterized princi- 
pally by grandeur, this is not com- 
monly a pronounced trait of the leafy 
forests. Rather are they distinguished 
for a certain air of cheerfulness, the 
expression of which will vary in dif- 
ferent localities; but in some way it 
will manifest itself almost everywhere. 
107 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

Thus, in the southern half of New 
England woodland scenery is marked 
by a peculiar expression of quiet 
gladness. Whether it be in small 
farm woods among low hills, or in 
continuous forest, as in the Berkshires, 
there is the same happy choice in 
bright and cheerful trees: maples, 
birches, elms, and others; some bright 
with early spring blossoms, some add- 
ing to the variety of color by their bark 
or shining leaves, others agile of leaf 
and bough in the frequent breezes. 
Here we find an abundance of oaks, 
trees whose fresh, glossy leaves seem 
to be specially well fitted to purify the 
air, for there is a distinct and refresh- 
ing odor in oak forests. We find an 
ample choice of tender, springy plants 
among the moist rocks. These smaller 
108 



CHAEACTEE OF BEOADLEAF FOEESTS 

woods, too, are the favored haunts of 
the songbirds, for here they find the 
glint of sunshine that they so much 
delight in. 

A similar warmth of expression be- 
longs to the leafy woods of other 
regions. If we compare New Eng- 
land with Pennsylvania, we shall find 
that the broadleaf forests of the latter 
are denser and more continuous, while 
they are at the same time richer in the 
variety of trees, shrubs, and other 
forms of embellishment, which find here 
a milder air and a richer soil. Spring- 
time is more luxuriant and replete with 
happy surprise and change. But while 
these forests are perhaps more elabo- 
rate than those of southern ~New Eng- 
land, I cannot say that they impress 
me as being so homelike and engaging. 
109 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

Along the Gulf and in Florida the 
dank forests of the swamps and river 
bottoms, finding all the conditions fa- 
vorable to a luxuriant vegetation, are 
characterized by extraordinary complex- 
ity of growth. Perhaps we enter some 
secluded patch of virgin forest, and sit 
down for a while in its dense shade, 
impressed by the strangeness and soli- 
tude of the place. Our curiosity is 
aroused by the multifarious assem- 
blage of trees, vines, and shrubbery, 
and we wonder how many ages it has 
been thus, and how far back some of 
the oldest trees may date in their his- 
tory. But they seem rather to have 
no age at all; only to be linked in 
some mysterious way with the dim 
past out of which they have arisen. 

A mighty live oak leans across the 
110 




Virgin Forest Scene in Florida 



CHARACTER OF BKOADLEAF FORESTS 

scene, moist and green with moss; an- 
other is noticed farther away among 
slender palmettos, whose spear-edged 
leaves catch the sunlight. Vines and 
climbers hang about the stems or 
droop lazily from the boughs. In the 
nearby sluggish water, where the soil 
is deep and moldy, stands a sweet 
gum with curiously chiseled bark, as if 
some patient artist had been at work; 
and a little beyond, some cypresses are 
roofed by the delicate web of their own 
foliage. 

We may sit dreaming away a full 
hour thus, with only the hum of a few 
insects and perhaps a stray scarlet 
tanager flitting by to disturb our medi- 
tations. 

It has been indicated in a former 
chapter that the broadleaf woods, 
111 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

taken as a whole, are decidedly richer 
in shrubs and small plants than the 
evergreen or coniferous forests. This 
adventitious source of beauty has much 
to do with their general character, be- 
cause the gay show of blossom and 
fruit, bright stem, and diverse habits 
of growth of these lesser plants, con- 
tributes appreciably to the liveliness of 
sylvan scenery. But the effect derived 
from the blossoms and fruits of many 
of the trees themselves should not be 
overlooked. In this respect the broad- 
leaf trees are superior to the evergreens. 
The poplars and willows ripen their 
woolly and silvery tassels when the 
snow has scarcely disappeared. The 
bright tufts of the red maple, the little 
yellow flowers of the sassafras, the 
snowy white ones of the serviceberry 
112 



CHAEACTEE OF BEOADLEAF FOEESTS 

and flowering dogwood, the latter's 
red berries in fall, the brilliant fruit 
of the mountain ash, the perfect flowers 
of the magnolias, the heavily clus- 
tered locusts, honey locusts, and black 
cherries, and the basswoods with 
fragrant little creamy flowers, alike 
do their part in lending character to 
the forest wherever they may have 
their range. 

Then, in addition to the beauty 
that appeals to us through the outward 
senses, there is a quality in the forests 
that is dear to us through an inward 
sense. It is the influence of a temper- 
ament that seems to belong to the place 
itself: the pure and health-giving atmo- 
sphere, the quiet and rest that binds up 
the wounded spirit and brings peace 
to the troubled mind. 
113 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

We leave the turmoil of the city and 
the thousand little cares of daily life 
and seek refuge for a while in sylvan 
retreats, in some pleasant leafy forest 
with murmuring water and sunbeams; 
and presently the ruffled concerns of 
yesterday are smoothed away and the 
forest, like sleep, " knits up the raveled 
sleeve of care." 

In the woods there is harmony in all 
things; all things are subordinated to 
one purpose and desire: that the best 
may be made out of life, however small 
the means. There is a kind of honesty 
and truth here, and a self-sufficiency 
in everything. Shakspere says, in the 
words of Duke Senior, who stands sur- 
rounded by his followers in the Forest 
of Arden (" As You Like it," act ii, 
scene 1) : — 

114 



CHAEACTEE OF BEOADLEAF FOEESTS 

Are not these woods 
More free from peril than the envious 

court? 
Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, 
The seasons' difference ; as, the icy fang 
And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, 
Which, when it bites and blows upon my 

body, 
Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and 

say, 
" This is no flattery : these are counselors 
That feelingly persuade me what I am." 

And this our life, exempt from public 
haunt, 

Finds tongues in trees, books in the run- 
ning brooks, 

Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 



115 



THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS 

IT has already been said (page 31) 
that the evergreen or coniferous 
forests differ from those described in 
the foregoing chapter by a denser com- 
munity of growth and by their frequent 
occurrence as " pure " forests. Their 
gregariousness makes it proper to appty 
such expressions as the " pine forests 
of Michigan " and the " spruce forests 
of Maine." It will be seen presently 
that these special characteristics are 
esthetically important. Moreover, it is 
a fact that they borrow much grandeur 
and beauty from the atmospheric con- 
116 




Courtesy of tke Bureau of Forestry 

A Group of Conifers. Montana 



THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS 

ditions of their environment, which, if 
we except certain large tracts of pine 
forests, is commonly placed among 
mountains and at considerable eleva- 
tions above the sea. To these several 
sources must be ascribed many of the 
qualities that have invested the ever- 
green forests with a peculiar magnifi- 
cence and beauty. 

The reader may be surprised at the 
statement that coniferous forests are 
distinguished for a "dense commu- 
nity of growth," for it must have 
been noticed that many of our Rocky 
Mountain forests do not bear evidence 
of this fact. And yet it is true that 
the typical habit, so to speak, of the 
conifers is a close huddling together of 
individuals. It is shown in the mas- 
sive red fir forests of western Wash- 
117 



FOKEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

ington and the redwoods of California, 
which are probably the densest and 
heaviest in the world; in the crowded 
Engelmann spruce and alpine fir groves 
common to certain soils and situations 
in Colorado ; and in the dense tracts of 
lodgepole pine scattered throughout 
the mountains of the West. In the 
East the same tendency is illustrated 
by the better sections of the Adirondack 
spruce forests and the splendid pineries 
that once covered the Great Lake re- 
gion. If we call to mind these exten- 
sive examples, we realize how the coni- 
fers ever strive to build a dense and 
impenetrable forest. That they are ca- 
pable of a like growth in other parts 
of the world also, will be attested by 
those who have seen the spruce and fir 
forests of Germany and France. 
118 



THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS 

While the regions that have just 
been mentioned exhibit the health and 
vigor of coniferous forests under favor- 
able natural conditions, there are cer- 
tain portions of the Rocky Mountains 
where the climate is too dry and the 
topography and soil are too austere 
and rocky to suit even that hardy class 
of trees. So here, under circumstances 
that may almost be pronounced abnor- 
mal for forest growth, the evergreens 
fight a harder battle, while the broad- 
leaf trees, with the exception of the 
poplar tribe, are scarce indeed. We 
must, therefore, turn to the more typi- 
cal coniferous forests that have en- 
joyed at least a fair share of nature's 
gifts — whether it be within the range 
of the Rocky Mountains or elsewhere 
— to understand those peculiar quali- 
119 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

ties that are connected with their sur- 
roundings or their characteristic habits 
of growth. 

One of the commonest attributes of 
such forests is their grandeur; partly 
inherent and in part also derived from 
the sublhnity of their surroundings. 
Their situation is often in the midst of 
wild and picturesque mountain scenery, 
where they find a proper setting for 
their own majestic forms among crags 
and precipices and on the great shoul- 
ders of mountains; where powerful 
winds and severe snows test their en- 
durance and strength. It is here that 
we chiefly find those awe-inspiring dis- 
tant views that harmonize so well with 
the evergreen forests. The trees spread 
over the mountains for miles and miles 
in closely fledged masses, and become 
120 



THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS 

more impressive with distance as the 
color changes from a continuity of dark 
green to shades of blue and soft, dis- 
tant purple. In form and color the 
trees blend together and seem to move 
up the dangerous slopes and difficult 
passes in mighty multitudes. 

Contributing to the same impression 
of grandeur, we have the possibility in 
these lofty regions of certain glorious 
effects in sunlight and shade. At sun- 
rise the first rays flash on the pointed 
tops of the uppermost trees, and with 
the advancing hours descend the dark 
slopes on their golden errand. Mean- 
while the western sides lie in shadow. 
At noon a soft haze spreads through 
the valleys, and in the twilight hours 
the intense depth of purple in the dis- 
tant ranges, where stratus clouds catch 
121 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

the last rays of the sun, obscures the 
contours of the forests and makes 
them even more sublime. This, too, 
were not possible without great mass 
and uniformity of aspect. 

The interchange between lights and 
shadows cast by the moving clouds is 
nowhere so effectively exhibited as in 
higher altitudes and over the surfaces of 
evergreen forests. A wide expanse en- 
ables us to follow with our eyes the in- 
teresting chase of the cloud shadows, as 
they fly up the slopes, the steeper the 
faster, and glide noiselessly but swiftly 
over outstretched areas of endless green. 
The clouds seem to move faster over 
mountain ranges, as a rule, than they 
do over the low valleys. Or is it only 
because now we see them nearer by and 
can gage the rapidity of their flight? 
122 



THE CONIFEKOUS FOEESTS 

Suppose, instead of a restless day, 
it should be calm, with cloud masses 
heaped in the sky and the sun sinking 
low. There has been a loose snowfall 
in the afternoon, and every twig, 
branch, and spray hangs muffled in 
snow. The rocks are capped with a 
light cover and ribbed with snowy 
lines along their sides. The air is 
pure and breathless. The disappear- 
ing sun sends back a rosy light to the 
canopy of clouds overhead, and the 
reflection falls upon masses of frosted, 
whitened evergreens, lending them a 
breath of color that deepens as the sun 
sinks lower still; and the rays enter 
the openings of the hills and flood the 
opposite slopes, till they glow with a 
fiery red. 

Thus the grandeur of these forests 
123 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

may be due to expanse and volume, 
depth of color, sunlight and shade, or 
to effects borrowed from the clouds. 
Finally, we notice another kind of 
grandeur when coniferous forests are 
visited by storms. First comes the 
moaning of the wind, mysterious and 
unsearchable, and different from the 
roar and rush that sweeps through 
the broadleaf woods. Then follows 
the uneasy communication from tree 
to tree, a trembling that spreads from 
section to section. When the rush 
of the wind finally strikes the tall, 
straight forms they do not sway their 
arms about as wildly as do the maples, 
elms, or tulip trees, but bend and sway 
throughout their length and rock ma- 
jestically. 

Not in outward aspect alone are 
124 




A Thicket of White Firs 



THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS 

these forests noble and stately. A 
nobleness lies in the nature of the 
living trees themselves; for, though 
we may call them unconscious, it is 
life still, and they are expressive with 
meaning. Far simpler in their habits 
and requirements than the broadleaf 
trees, they are, nevertheless, more gen- 
erous to man. Endurance and hard- 
ship is then lot, but noble form of 
trunk and crown and useful soft wood 
are the products of their life. There is 
no forest mantle like theirs to shield 
from the blast, especially when it is 
formed of young thickets of the sim- 
ple but refined spruces and firs. 
When, at the last, they yield their life 
to man, it seems to me there is some- 
thing exalted even in the manner of 
their fall. The tree hardly quivers 
125 



FOKEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

under the blows of the ax; a mere 
trembling in the outermost twigs, and 
then, hardly as if cut off from the 
source of life, the tall, straight form 
sinks slowly to the earth. 

Another common attribute of ever- 
green forests is their characteristic 
silence. Birds do not frequent them as 
much as the leafy forests. In these 
solitudes, far removed from village and 
farm, there is often no sound but the 
ring of the distant ax and the sough 
of the wind. In winter, as we push 
through the thickets of small spruces 
or hemlocks, or stand for a while be- 
neath lofty pines, while all around is 
muffled in snow, the silence seems sanc- 
tified and vaster than elsewhere. 

In addition to their grandeur and 
sublimity, and their silence, they are dis- 
126 



THE CONIFEKOTJS FOBESTS 

tinguished for an element of softness. 
This is seen in the delicate textnre and 
pure color of their foliage, the effect of 
which is heightened by being massed 
in the dense forest. We have already 
noticed the mild olive shade of the 
eastern white pine. When the wind 
blows through it, it seems as if the 
foliage were melting away. It would 
be difficult, also, to match the green 
color of the red fir, especially as it 
looks in winter; or the luxuriant bluish- 
gray of the western blue spruce. 

A further softening in the general 
effect of evergreen forests is produced 
by the manner in which the trees in- 
termingle in the dense mass, merging 
their sharp, individual outlines in the 
rounded contours and upper surfaces of 
the combined view. Near at hand, of 
127 



FOREST TEEES AND FOREST SCENERY 

course, we cannot but notice the atten- 
uated forms and jagged edges of the 
trees, which, indeed, are interesting 
enough in themselves; but on look- 
ing gradually into the distance we 
find them thatching into one another, 
closing up interstices and smoothing 
away irregularities in a remarkable 
way. This is particularly true of the 
spruces and firs; but in some of the 
opener pine forests, as, for example, in 
the longleaf pines of the South, the 
boughs and crowns themselves are 
rounded into masses and pleasing 
contours. It should be remembered, 
also, that these effects are present in 
winter as well as in summer. 

The element of softness is sometimes 
brought into very beautiful association 
with certain effects of mists and clouds. 
128 



THE CONIFEROUS FORESTS 

The indistinct contours and delicate 
lights of the drifting vapors and cloud 
forms, as they wander across the trees, 
blend with the serene aspect of the 
forest. At other times the clouds 
gather into banks and lie motionless in 
some valley or rest like a veil upon the 
mountain tops. Wordsworth has de- 
scribed these effects in his graphic 
way by saying — 

Far-stretched beneath the many-tinted hills, 
A mighty waste of mist the valley fills, 
A solemn sea ! whose billows wide around 
Stand motionless, to awful silence bound : 
Pines, on the coast, through mist their tops 

uprear 
That like to leaning masts of stranded ships 

appear. 

In spring or summer just before sun- 
rise it is very beautiful to see how these 
129 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

banks of vapor are lifted by the stirring 
airs of the dawn, how the draperies of 
mist draw apart and open up vistas of 
the trees, which drip with moisture, 
and are presently illumined by the 
broad shafts of sunlight that pour down 
upon them. 

Lest it be thought that only the 
dense coniferous forests possess supe- 
rior qualities, I desire to put in a plea 
for the open ones also. 

It is a universal truth in nature that 
when a living thing has made the best 
possible use of its environment, when 
the power within has been sacrificed 
and united to the circumstances with- 
out, there is evolved a dignity of charac- 
ter and a resulting expression of fitness 
and beauty. This principle is exem- 
plified in the very open forests of the 
130 




Courtesy of the Bureau of Forestry 

An Open Forest in the Southwest 



THE CONIFEROUS FOEESTS 

Southwest, In the mountain ranges of 
New Mexico, Arizona, and southern 
California the forests have a hard 
struggle for existence. The winter 
months at the higher elevations are se- 
vere; in the summer rain is scarce, or 
entirely absent, and the sun beats down 
upon the dry earth through the rarefied 
atmosphere with intense and desiccating 
power. Naturally the forest trees are 
scattered, and on the steep, crumbly 
slopes, dry and rocky, they hug the 
soil and cling to it with uncertain foot- 
ing. But in a sheltered ravine, or on 
the back of a rounded ridge, or in a 
slight swale or hollow of the mountain 
— repeatedly, in fact, among those rug- 
ged slopes — we meet with the dignity, 
the beauty, and the peculiar expressive- 
ness of the open coniferous forest, with 
131 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

its fine definition and stereoscopic ef- 
fects and the depth and perspective of 
its long vistas. 

On the crest of the monntain, where, 
from the valley below, the early sun- 
light is first seen to break through, the 
trees, standing apart, do not appear so 
much like a forest as like a congrega- 
tion of individuals, each with an identity 
of its own. Indeed, there among the 
fierce gales of autumn and winter each 
shapes its own life in a glorious inde- 
pendence, expressive in the knotty, 
twisted boles and the picturesque 
crowns. But in summer the breezes 
strain through the foliage with the 
lethargic sound of the ocean surge; or 
a halcyon stillness reigns under a deep 
blue, cloudless sky. 

Large old trees, these, with a history, 
132 




A Storm-beaten Veteran 



THE CONIFEKOUS FOEESTS 

that have braved life together. They 
have seen companion veterans fall by 
their side, long ago, into the deep, 
closely matted needle-mold. Thence 
arose ont of the moister hollows be- 
neath the rotting trunk and boughs a 
new generation, and the greater num- 
ber of these have disappeared, too, 
for some reason or another; only the 
strongest at last leading, to take the 
place of the departed. How dignified, 
how simple are these old, stalwart 
trees on the exposed ridge of the 
mountain. 

Thus the coniferous forests, by vir- 
tue of their inherent qualities and by 
means of the effects they borrow from 
their environment, possess a tone that 
is as original and distinct as the char- 
acter of the forests belonging to the 
133 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

other class. It has already been inti- 
mated that the two are not always 
strictly separable, bnt that individual 
trees, or groups, or whole stretches of 
woods of the one will sometimes min- 
gle with the other, a fact that has 
probably been noticed by the most 
casual observer. While the cone-bear- 
ers, however, not infrequently de- 
scend into the lower altitudes, the 
leafy forest trees are not so apt to 
be found at the high elevations at 
which many of the former find their 
natural home. Where the cone-bearers 
are merely an addition to the broadleaf 
woods they do not quite preserve their 
identity, but rather impress us as being 
merely a part in the general adornment 
and composition of the forest to which 
they belong. Where they remain 
134 



THE CONIFEEOUS FOKESTS 

"pure," however, as they do, for in- 
stance, in the pineries of the coastal 
plain in the South, they never fail to 
express, in one or another manner, 
their individuality as a forest; as by 
their uniformity in size and color, by 
their odor, or by the scenic character 
of the region of their occurrence. 

All the preceding qualities of conif- 
erous forests practically address them- 
selves in some manner to our physi- 
cal senses. But, like the broadleaf 
forests, these also possess a trait that 
rather addresses itself to our mood or 
personal temperament. A character- 
istic air of loneliness and wild seclu- 
sion belongs to them that contrasts 
strikingly with the cheerful tone of 
the other class. It has been commonly 
remarked that to some kinds of people 
135 



FOREST TEEES AND FOREST SCENERY 

the coniferous forests are oppressive, at 
least on first acquaintance. Such na- 
tures feel the weight of their gloom and 
lose then own buoyancy of spirit if they 
stay too long within their confines ; and 
it is noticeable that even the inhab- 
itants of these lonely retreats are not 
infrequently affected with a reticence 
and a kind of melancholy that im- 
presses the stranger almost like a feel- 
ing of resignation. This peculiar tem- 
perament, however, may be judged too 
hastily, and is understood better after 
a time. It is probably true that the 
familiar and accessible woods of valley 
and plain, where trails and wood-roads 
give us a feeling of security, are more 
attractive and agreeable to most of us ; 
yet there is a wonderful charm about 
those dark forests of the mountains 
136 



THE COKIFEKOTJS FOKESTS 

that have grown up in undisturbed 
simplicity. After the first feeling of 
strangeness wears off, as it soon will, 
they grow companionable and interest- 
ing. There is a virtue in the sturdy 
forms that have grown to maturity 
without aid or interference by man. 
We would not change them in that 
place for the most beautiful trees in a 
park. Even the woodsman, whose 
days are spent here in the hardest toil, 
feels a longing for the forest, his home, 
when his short respite in the summer 
is over. So we, too, though we may 
long for civilization after a few months 
in the forest, will yet feel the desire to 
return to it after once thoroughly mak- 
ing its acquaintance. 

The attitude of the woodsman to- 
ward the forest is much like the af- 
137 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

fection which the sailor has for the 
ocean. There is, indeed, a similarity 
between their callings, and even the ele- 
ments in which they pass their lives 
are not so dissimilar in reality as may 
appear on the surface. In his vast 
domain of evergreen trees that cover 
mountain and valley, the woodsman, 
too, is shut out from the busier haunts 
of men. He lives for months in his 
sequestered camp or cabin, where his 
bed is often only a narrow bunk of 
boughs or straw. His food is simple 
and his clothing rough and plain, to 
suit the conditions of his life. A 
large part of the time he is out in 
snow and rain, tramping over rough 
rock and soil. The camps that are 
scattered through the forest are to him 
like islands, where he can turn aside 
138 



THE CONIFEKOTJS FORESTS 

for food and rest when on some longer 
journey than usual. 

Like the sailor he also has learned 
some of the secrets of nature. He 
does not usually possess a compass, 
but he can tell its points by more 
familiar signs: by the pendent tops 
of the hemlocks, which usually bend 
toward the east, or by the mossy sides 
of the trees, which are generally 
in the direction of the coolest and 
moistest quarter of the heavens. In 
an extreme case he will even mount 
one of the tallest of the trees to find 
his bearings in his oceanlike forest. 
If well judged, the sighing of the 
wind in the boughs, I have been told, 
says much about the coming weather; 
just as the sickly wash of the waves 
means something to the sailor. "Withal, 
139 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

both he and the woodsman are natural 
and generally honest fellows, hard 
workers at perilous callings, and less 
apt to speak than to commune with 
their own thoughts. 



140 



YI 

THE ARTIFICIAL FORESTS OF 
EUROPE 

TO some of us, in this age of travel, 
the forests of Europe have be- 
come as familiar as our own. As 
scenic objects they have their faults 
and their excellences. While we ap- 
preciate their order and neatness, and 
the beautiful effects that may arise out 
of the subordination of all components 
of the forest to one main purpose, we 
Americans always miss in them the 
freshness of nature. 

These forests, as they now stand, 
are the result of a long-continued ap- 
141 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

plication of the scientific principles of 
forestry, under special conditions, to 
the European forests of old. Having 
referred repeatedly to forestry itself, 
I now purpose, to the extent which a 
single chapter will permit, to explain 
the sources of beauty, or the absence of 
it, in these artificial forests. I shall 
thus place in contrast with our own, 
which are just beginning to undergo 
a new process of development, those of 
Europe, which have long been sub- 
jected to one in many respects similar. 
The importance of forests had long 
been understood by the people of 
Europe. The relation which they held 
to civilized life, both in a material way 
and otherwise, led, more than a century 
ago, to a systematic and scientific 
treatment. It was realized that these 
142 



ARTIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUROPE 

forests might be made perpetual, and 
so might furnish a constant supply of 
useful material; that they economized 
and regulated the flow of mountain 
streams, which are always of great 
importance to the agricultural lands of 
subjacent regions; that they held in 
place the loose soil of the slopes, thus 
averting avalanches and ruinous floods ; 
that they broke the force of the winds, 
tempered and purified the air, and I 
may add, inspired man with better and 
happier thoughts. 

For these reasons the people of Eu- 
rope determined to guard their forests 
well, and to aid nature, if possible, in 
becoming still more useful to man. 
To this end they made a careful study 
of the life history of the forest, and 
investigated the requirements of the 
143 



FOBEST TKEES AND FOKEST SCENEEY 

trees and their rates of growth under 
varying conditions of soil, heat, light, 
and moisture. They also studied the 
numerous dangers to which the forest 
is exposed, and invented means and 
established laws for its protection. In 
short, they effected an ingenious ad- 
justment between the needs of the 
forest and the requirements of man, 
and in course of time laid the founda- 
tions for a new system that was des- 
tined to be of great importance to the 
economic interests of nations. 

Many sciences were involved in the 
solution of these questions. With 
the progress in means and methods the 
aims and objects of the new profes- 
sion gradually grew to be more and 
more clearly denned, and knowledge 
and experience ultimately evolved the 
144 



ARTIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUEOPE 

new science of forestry. To the for- 
ester were finally intrusted the reestab- 
lishment, protection and preservation, 
the improvement, the regulation, the 
management and administration, as 
well as the final cutting, of the forest. 
Such interference with the work of 
nature ultimately affected its aspect. 
In the long life of the forest the 
changes were slow, but in course of 
time the stamp of artificiality was im- 
pressed upon it, and the imprint of 
nature's own countenance was taken 
away. To an American, if he has 
seen a little of our wildness, a great 
charm is wanting in the artificial for- 
ests of Europe. The sun does not seem 
to set naturally, but to hide behind 
roads and houses. It may be a life- 
like and harmonious scene, but it does 
145 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

not speak as deeply and expressively 
as our wilder woods. The necessity 
of it is thrust upon you. It seems, at 
times, as if the free will and perfect 
liberty of the air and rain, of the wind, 
were wanting. 

These forests are crossed by roads 
and are often divided into sections of 
distinct age, kind, and appearance. 
Shrubs, if any, are few. The deer's 
track is known. The history of these 
trees is known and recorded, and even 
their doom is fixed for a near or dis- 
tant day. 

There is, however, another side to 
this question. Through their very de- 
sign and fitness for an intended object 
the effects that are produced are often 
decidedly pleasing. What these effects 
are will now appear from an examina- 
146 



ARTIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUROPE 

tion of the four different types or 
classes that constitute at present the 
artificial forests of Europe. 

The type of artificial forest that 
differs least from our own eastern 
woods is one that has received the 
name of " selection forest." It consti- 
tutes a transition to the more complex 
forms. As in our own case, trees of 
different kinds and of various sizes 
are intermingled in the forest; but the 
European forest has more uniformity 
than ours, and expresses a conceived 
purpose. This is readily explained by 
the fact that from the beginning of 
the new method the trees were never 
removed indiscriminately from the 
wooded area, but that a careful selec- 
tion was made from time to time of 
certain kinds, according to size and 
147 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

usefulness. Useful material, however, 
was not the sole consideration. The 
cutting was intended also to improve 
the conditions of growth for the trees 
that remained standing, and to increase 
the proportion of the species that were 
most useful or desirable. Finally, by 
opening up the forest to a proper de- 
gree of sunlight, the way was prepared 
for the germination of seeds that might 
fall from the old trees, in order to pro- 
vide early for a new generation in the 
forest. 

It will be readily understood, I be- 
lieve, that in course of time such a 
forest would betray to the eye a cer- 
tain gradation in the sizes of the trees, 
and a fixed proportion in the number 
of those belonging to one or another 
species. To this extent the selection 
148 




A German ' ' Selection Forest ' 



AETIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUROPE 

forests differ from our second-growth 
woods of the East; and yet, as com- 
pared to the other three European 
types, their principal merit, esthetic- 
ally, is their naturalness. Though 
very different from our virgin forests, 
they nevertheless possess the variety, 
cheerfulness, and interesting play of 
light and shade that have been noted 
in an earlier chapter. In Germany 
they are usually somewhat precise and 
trim in appearance; but in France and 
elsewhere they look a little wilder, and 
are often enlivened with holly or ivy, 
some sportive raspberry, or other gay 
shrub or vine. In European countries 
where forestry has become thoroughly 
established this type of forest has grad- 
ually disappeared, or has diminished 
greatly in proportion, in order to make 
149 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

way for the other more highly devel- 
oped forms. 

The young forest growth that goes 
by the name of " coppice " is linked to 
the preceding kind by the association of 
time, for it is also one of the old forms. 
The sound of the word brings to mind 
the copses of England, those spor- 
tive little thickets that we may have 
read about, or seen running along the 
streams, or straggling over the hills. 
But the coppice of Germany or France 
is not quite the same as the copse of 
England. It is a young forest of busi- 
nesslike aspect, in which a design for 
usefulness is unmistakable. The pur- 
pose in it is to reap an approximately 
equal harvest each year, such as fire- 
wood from beeches, hornbeams, or the 
like, withes from willows, charcoal from 
chestnut, or tanbark from oak. 
150 



AETIFICIAL FOBESTS OF EUROPE 

The means to accomplish the end are 
very simple. Only one kind of tree 
composes the coppice, and the forest is 
graded in sections, each a year older 
than the preceding. It is like a series 
of blocks, in which each is a little taller 
than the last. The tallest falls by the 
ax, and the next the following year, 
and so through the series till the cycle 
is completed, when it may be resumed 
as before. The repetition is possible 
because a tree is chosen for this kind 
of forest that will renew itself by nat- 
urally sprouting from the stump that is 
always left after cutting. 

The coppice woods must be seen to 
appreciate their charm. They have a 
distinct flavor and a character that one 
easily remembers after a first acquain- 
tance. !Not too far removed from the 
town or village, yet often hidden in 
151 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

some secluded part of the hills, we find 
the coppice a neat-looking place. The 
small wood that has been cut is care- 
fully stacked along the roadside in 
bundles or cords. Within one of the 
sections we see the wood-cutters at 
work with their axes and bill-hooks, 
and can fancy them trudging home 
contentedly at the close of day. We 
find the rabbits taking the coppice for 
their own, sporting about and wearing 
tracks in the thickets. A quiet place, 
and homelike withal. We can look 
out above the thicket of young trees 
at the sky and the older environing 
woods. The sounds come mellowed 
through the distance to this open spot, 
as of the heavy ax in the large woods, 
or the song of some woman in the far 
valley. 

152 



ABTIFICTAL FOKESTS OF EUEOPE 

We have no coppice woods just like 
these in America. Our willow farms 
are the only ones that have been sub- 
jected to a system like the one de- 
scribed, and these are entirely too 
low to be called woods. They are 
graded in size and age from one to 
four years, and separated into blocks, 
just like the willow coppices of Ger- 
many. At a distance the lithe stems 
with diminutive tufts of foliage at the 
top, standing in straight rows, almost 
as dense as grain, have more the ap- 
pearance of an agricultural product 
than a tree farm. 

The Christmas tree plantations, a 
kind of forest gardening, as it were, 
remind us of the coppice in appear- 
ance, but cannot truly be called such. 
As the conifers that furnish us with 
153 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

Christmas trees are not capable of 
sprouting from the stump, the growers 
must depend upon planting for their 
propagation, which is a principle di- 
rectly opposed to the idea of coppice. 

Throughout the Eastern States there 
is an abundance of broadleaf stump- 
sprout thickets, which have come by 
inheritance to the ground from which 
their progenitors were removed by the 
wood-cutter's ax. While some of these 
approach nearly to the European cop- 
pices in intention, they do not bear out 
the resemblance sufficiently for a com- 
parison. They lack their system and 
structure, though they depend upon 
the same power of reproduction for 
their existence. Nevertheless, they 
have their own charm. I remember 
one, at the edge of a tall forest, in 
154 



ABTIFICIAL FORESTS OF EtJROPE 

which the sprouts were composed of 
oak, beech, hickory, tulip tree, dog- 
wood, haw, and a few pine saplings, 
all of which formed a dense thicket of 
young trees. In summer it was pleas- 
ant to thread one's way through this 
place, quite concealed by the straight 
young growth, or to lie down there 
and listen for a whole morning to the 
twitterings and songs of birds, shut in 
by a wealth of foliage. 

There is another type of European 
forest known as " coppice under stan- 
dards." This is no more than a coppice 
growing underneath a selection forest 
somewhat different in aspect from the 
one already described. In the present 
case the selection forest is opener, the 
trees being fewer in number. Ample 
light is thus admitted for the growth of 
155 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

the coppice beneath. The appearance 
of the whole is that of an open forest 
into which the younger thickets have 
penetrated. 

The esthetic effect of this combina- 
tion may be described in very few 
words. While the coppice loses much 
of its charm, the overspreading forest 
gains something by this sacrifice. The 
former keeps the soil in fair and fresh 
condition, thus insuring a healthy 
growth to the large trees. It also 
shades the lower portions of their 
trunks, in consequence of which many 
of them develop into clean specimens, 
with strong, well-rounded stems, and 
graceful, wide-spreading crowns. 

The last of the four types, the " high 
forest," is the most artificial and highly 
developed of the series. In its construc- 
15G 



AETIFICIAL FOKESTS OF EUEOPE 

tion it is in some respects like the cop- 
pice; for, as in that type, there is a 
uniformity of size in the trees on re- 
stricted areas, and the species that 
compose the entire forest are very lim- 
ited in number. Coniferous high for- 
ests, which are the most common, are 
often composed of only a single kind 
of tree, and broadleaf forests of the 
same type rarely contain more than 
two or three species. These forests, 
like the coppice, comprise a full com- 
plement of sizes and ages, each con- 
fined to a separate section; but the 
steps are not single years, as in the 
coppice, but periods of ten or twenty 
years, or even more; so that the high 
forest, above all, is a much taller and 
older one. The sections that com- 
pose it are not regular in outline, ex- 
157 



FOKEST TREES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

cept in certain forests on flats and 
levels, nor do they necessarily lie 
side by side in the consecutive order of 
size and age. Finally, the high forest 
also differs from the coppice in the 
manner of its origin; for, while the 
former owes its existence to seedlings 
that have grown up spontaneously, or 
been sown or planted, the coppice is a 
young forest that has sprouted from 
the stumps of trees that have been cut. 
Thus the high forest, while it may 
be compared with the coppice in its 
construction, is yet in certain respects 
so different from it as to convey a very 
distinct impression. I here disregard 
the younger portions of the forest, for, 
in the light of the present discussion, 
they are merely preparatory to the 
mature forest, destined to be useful 
158 




A "High Forest " of Spruce in Saxony 



AETIFICIAL FOKESTS OF EUBOPE 

only after the completeness of age. In 
the older portions the one distinguish- 
ing characteristic is simple dignity. 
To this one quality all other points of 
excellence or beauty conform and ad- 
just themselves. The young tree or 
the casual shrub that may have found 
its way into the company of the cen- 
tenarians, is welcome; but the absorb- 
ing interest lies in the noble grandeur 
of the old trees that have grown up 
together. Some, under the influence 
of better soil or more light, have done 
better than others; but they are all 
sound and stately trees, and together 
represent the best product of the forest. 
Long ago other trees that grew in 
their midst, but were less promising, 
were removed for the sake of these. 
Under their continuous roof of foliage 
159 



FOEEST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

there is a cool, deep shade. The 
ground is scattered with fern, or cov- 
ered with deep beds of leaves, or with 
the glossy needles of the conifers. If 
the forest has originated from seeds 
borne by a generation of trees that 
previously occupied the same spot, and 
the seeds germinated here and there 
and sprouted into a new forest upon 
the removal of the old, we shall now 
find the trees distributed in natural 
positions. Where, however, the new 
forest has been planted, which is often 
the case with the conifers, the trees 
stand in close rank and file, and we 
walk among their columns as in nat- 
ural aisles and corridors. Here there 
is hardly a shrub to shut out the 
gloomy distance, and only at intervals 
a stray intruder with exceptional 
160 



ARTIFICIAL FOEESTS OF EUROPE 

powers of shade endurance, a dwarfed 
yew tree, or a beech with refined, fan- 
like spray, comes into notice in the 
vista. 

If these are some of the changes 
that are wrought in forests through 
the application of a new science, if, 
through forestry in Europe, one kind 
of beauty has passed away and another 
kind has been called forth, will our 
own forests, it may be asked, un- 
dergo in time similar alterations? 
We cannot doubt that they will grow 
more artificial ; but under the modified 
application of the science of forestry 
to our own conditions, so different 
from those of Europe, the esthetic 
changes to be looked for would be 
difficult to predict. Nor would these 
161 



FOEEST TEEES AND FOEEST SCENEEY 

changes be predetermined, but, on the 
contrary, would depend very largely 
upon chance. It should be noted 
that forestry and landscape art are dis- 
tinct; that the former, ordinarily, is 
not affected by the latter, and has its 
own ends and aims — those of material 
usefulness. I say ordinarily, because 
there are circumstances under which 
forestry might, with slight modifica- 
tions and without a compromise to its 
own interests, adjust itself to some of 
the principles of landscape art. In- 
deed, this possible adjustment has been 
a subject of interest in Germany for 
more than twenty years, and the feasi- 
bility of a relationship between land- 
scape art and forestry has been practi- 
cally demonstrated by a noted German 
forester, Herr Heinrich von Salisch, on 
162 



AETIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUROPE 

his own estates. This gentleman has 
applied to them the practical methods 
of approved forestry under such modi- 
fications as his experience and taste 
suggested, and has thereby not only 
made his forest profitable, but also 
more beautiful than it was before. 7 

"With respect to our own forests it 
may be asserted that most of the pri- 
vate forest holdings of the United 
States, and probably all our national 
forest reserves, 8 as such, are destined 
primarily to serve purposes of utility, 
and very often to serve such purposes 
only. There are, however, a number 
of large forest estates owned by indi- 
viduals, and some belonging to com- 
monwealths and municipalities, which 
are esteemed as highly for their scenic 
character as for their material value, 
163 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

and pass in the public mind as emphati- 
cally under the name of parks as they 
occur to it in the light of financial 
investments. Such, for instance, are 
the Adirondack State Park and sev- 
eral large private forest estates in the 
same region, as well as certain large 
tracts of exceptionally beautiful forest 
in the western part of ^orth Carolina 
and about the head waters of the Mis- 
sissippi, which have now for some time 
attracted wide attention as desirable 
public possessions. 

In such forests as these, esthetic 
considerations might suggest certain 
departures from the ordinary methods 
of forestry. Some people apparently 
wish to go further, and believe that 
certain portions of these tracts should 
remain entirely undisturbed, in order 
164 



ARTIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUROPE 

that their primeval character may be 
preserved for the enjoyment of all 
future generations. 

The idea of a forest park, intact 
and inviolable, calls to mind our na- 
tional parks of the West, which were 
actually established by Congress for 
that very purpose. Possessing, as they 
do, wonders of nature and exceptional 
scenery, these parks have been thought 
worthy of preservation solely for their 
own sakes. This difference in inten- 
tion chiefly distinguishes them from 
the national reserves; so that, while 
the latter stand for the material benefit 
of the nation — whether it be directly, 
in the value of the timber, or indirectly, 
through the influence of the forest on 
the flow of streams — the value of the 
parks, on the other hand, speaks out of 
165 



FOREST TREES AND FOREST SCENERY 

their own countenance. Their merit 
consists in the influence of beauty and 
sublime scenery on the moral state of 
man. They are healthful, vigorous 
breathing - places, where noise and 
smoke and harassing cares are laid 
aside. 

It is well to bear this distinction in 
mind, because it appears not to be 
clearly recognized. "While the re- 
serves do not necessarily exclude some 
of the special advantages of the paiks, 
their value lies, above all, in their 
stores of wealth. In this connection 
it may be said, for instance, that the 
designation "Adirondack Park," that 
is currently applied to the State forest 
of northern New York, is a somewhat 
misleading expression; for, although 
its beauty is well known and appreci- 
166 



ARTIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUROPE 

ated and the State Constitution at 
present even forbids any cutting within 
its limits, yet the most competent 
judges believe that the Adirondack 
forest is exceedingly well fitted for the 
purposes of practical forestry. Indeed, 
several private tracts within that region 
already constitute the best known ex- 
amples of practical forestry in our 
country. If, however, it is intended 
to separate certain portions from the 
remainder, either within this region or 
that of the proposed Minnesota reserve, 
and to preserve these for their unique 
or exceptional character, these segre- 
gated tracts are parks in themselves, 
and should so be called. 

But the identity of our five national 
parks in the farther West is unmis- 
takable; and these would appear to 
167 



FOREST TEEES AND FOREST SCENERY 

suggest neither forestry proper, nor 
landscape forestry, nor even land- 
scape art. In them nature speaks for 
herself. The tasteful and well judged 
construction of roads and trails that 
shall be in harmony with the scenes 
through which they pass, or, better 
still, that shall be as unobtrusive as 
possible, is evidently a necessity if the 
parks are to be enjoyed by large num- 
bers of people. In exceptional cases 
the ax may be needed for the very 
preservation of the forest. But the 
principal care should be to protect 
these forests from fire, defacement, 
and spoliation. For to us and future 
generations the parks stand, above 
all, as examples of the glory of our 
primeval forests. 

The groves of big trees in the na- 
168 



ARTIFICIAL FORESTS OF EUROPE 

tional parks of California, the geologic 
wonders of Yellowstone, and the speci- 
mens of arctic fauna still living among 
the matchless glaciers of Mount Rai- 
nier, are national possessions of great 
interest, for whose preservation not 
only Americans, but distinguished Eu- 
ropeans also, have pleaded. These, 
then, are ours for their own sakes; 
but most of our other national forest 
possessions will undoubtedly have to 
submit to further development and to 
the dictates of a sterner necessity. 



169 



NOTES 

Note 1, page 5. There are about fifty distinct species 
of oak indigenous to the United States. 

Note 2, page 23. The bloom of the dogwood be- 
gins to wither and fall with the appearance of 
the leaves. In the illustration facing page 22 sev- 
eral leaves are seen among the bloom, but they 
belong to the bough of a neighboring tulip tree. 

Note 3, page 47. The juniper berries are in reality 
transformed cones. 

Note 4, page 52. The habit of the firs in early life 
is shown in the plate facing page 125. 

Note 5, page 63. Curiously enough, the old Eng- 
lish conception of a forest was chiefly that of a 
hunting ground, irrespective of the trees grow- 
ing there. Consequently some forests were very 
open stretches of ground. 

Note 6, page 71. The red-winged blackbird lin- 
gers in the Southern States through the winter. 

Note 7, page 163. German forestry — and, in a less 
degree, European forestry also — is indebted to 
Herr von Salisch for elaborating the idea that 
forest art can be united with practical, utilitarian 
forestry. His book on " Forest Esthetics," which 
fills a unique place in the literature of forestry, 
is an exposition of this interesting subject, based 
upon mature knowledge and experience. 

171 



NOTES 



Note 8, page 163. To the reader who is not famil- 
iar with the origin of our forest reserves it may 
be of interest to know how they became estab- 
lished. By an act of Congress of March 3rd, 1891, 
the President was empowered to segregate from 
time to time, and for the benefit of the Ameri- 
can people, forest areas situated within the limits 
of the public lands of the United States. In ac- 
cordance with this act proclamations were issued 
by Presidents Cleveland, Harrison, and McKinley, 
reserving forest areas amounting thus far (Sep- 
tember 1st, 1901) to 46,398,369 acres, or approxi- 
mately 72,500 square miles. There are, however, 
within these areas numerous bona fide holdings 
of private ownership, in which the owners are 
carrying on extensive cutting of timber. 

The reserves have been placed under the au- 
thority of the Commissioner of the General Land 
Office, Department of the Interior, and are en- 
trusted to the care of specially appointed super- 
intendents, supervisors, and rangers. Some of 
these forest tracts are now undergoing a careful 
study by experts in forestry, with the aim of sub- 
jecting them to methods of treatment specially 
adapted to them, in order that they may yield 
both useful material and a constant revenue, 
without impairing the productive power or vital- 
ity of the forest. The objects will thereby be ful- 
filled for which these reserves were established. 



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